System and Method for Procurement Strategy Optimization Against Expressive Contracts

ABSTRACT

In a computer-implemented method of procurement strategy optimization, data about a number of contracts is stored in a computer storage accessible to a processor of a computer along with a forecast of a future quantity of at least one good or service to be purchased. The processor of the computer determines a first plan for future procurement against at least one of the stored contracts based on the forecast and the following data specified by the one contract: a good or service, a payment rule, a trigger condition, and an associated effect of the trigger condition. In response to the processor automatically approving the first plan subject to one or more predetermined rules or the processor receiving an approval of the first plan, the processor causes the first plan to be adopted for future procurement.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

The present invention claims priority from U.S. Provisional PatentApplication No. 61/108,239, filed Oct. 24, 2008, which is incorporatedherein by reference.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION Purchase Transaction

A purchase transaction is a transaction between two parties related toone purchasing a good or service to the other. The complete purchase isconstituted of one or several transactions. The following are examplesof purchase transactions: a purchase order, in which the buyer declaresits intention make a purchase to the supplier; a bill of lading, bywhich the seller claims to have delivered the ordered goods or services;an invoice, by which the seller inform the buyer of the due amount; anda payment, by which the buyer compensate the seller for the goods orservices

Procurement Contracts:

Most business-to-business transactions are ruled by contracts. Aprocurement contract is a contract between two parties, one referred toas the seller, the selling party, the supplier, or the vendor, and theother referred to as the buyer, the buying party, the client, or thecustomer. A procurement contract give the buyer, under certainconditions, the right to place purchase orders to the suppliers, and theobligation, under certain conditions, for the supplier to fulfill theseorders by delivering the requested goods or services. A procurementcontract specifies how the payments between the parties as acompensation for the goods or services delivered should be computed. Thegoods or services that are the object of the contract are called thecontracted items.

Note that in some industries, it is custom to call “procurementcontract” a document that contains a number of terms and conditionsbetween the parties, but that does not contain the list of items thatare under contract, nor, a fortiori, their prices. Such a contract ismeant to be accompanied by another document, sometimes called a blankpurchase order or pricing schedule, that does specify the items and howto compute payments. This is not the sense in which we use the termprocurement contract in this document: we will always mean a completedocument, specifying the parties, the terms and conditions, thecontracted items, and how to compute payments.

The rules that determine the payments between the parties vary widely insophistication. At the simplest, contracts may simply list unit pricesfor each of the contracted items. Sometimes, these prices may depend onexternal indices, such as commodity price indices.

Contracts may also include conditional offers, which are clauses thattie a trigger condition to an effect. For example, the ongoing pricesmay drop as a result of the cumulative past volume crossing a threshold.

Spot Markets:

Businesses also make purchases to supplier with whom they do not have aprocurement contract. This can be for a variety of reasons. For example,when the supplies they need are standard enough, they may choose not tocontract any supplier so as to be able to chose the immediate cheapestfor each transaction. Or it may be that the volumes to be purchased arelow enough that the costs associated with the contracting process becomeprohibitive. In some circumstances, it may be that the buyer has one ormore contracted suppliers for a given good or service, but that at aspecific time the contracted suppliers are not able to provide thecontracted good or services. In this case, the buyer will often make anexceptional purchase with a non-contracted supplier.

The market for one-time, immediate or near-future deliveries of goods orservices, outside of any procurement contract, is called the sportmarket for these goods or services. The prices of these goods orservices on the spot market are called the spot prices.

Expressive Sourcing:

Sourcing is the process by which a firm or other organization makesstrategic decisions about which suppliers to contract with for goods,services, and other items that are purchased on an ongoing basis. Inaddition to determining which suppliers, it is during sourcing that afirm makes decisions about the kinds of goods and services to buy,together with the cost basis for purchases along with necessarycontracting details (e.g., terms of payment, delivery times and so on.)

For example, a hospital system may decide to enter into an exclusivecontract with a new supplier of artificial knees, while at the same timedeciding to split an allocation for generic pharmaceutical suppliesbetween two suppliers to mitigate risk while still taking advantage ofvolume discounts. A large multi-national company may source sea freightcapacity and trucking capacity, perhaps adopting new shipping routes inthe process if this network redesign provides cost benefits.

Sourcing is a strategic decision, in the sense that it is a complex,multi-faceted decision and one without an immediate impact on the“bottom line” of a business because no goods are purchased during thesourcing itself. Rather, sourcing determines winning suppliers alongwith contracts that will then executed against during procurement. Thatis, the outcome of a sourcing event is a set of procurement contracts.In comparison, procurement—the process of actually ordering goods andservices, making payments and receiving delivery of goods andservices—is tactical in that it directly impacts day-to-day operationsof a business and incurs direct costs to the bottom line.

Sourcing was traditionally a manual process by which a sourcing teamwould negotiate deals through discussion and exchange of proposals andcounterproposals, or by otherwise issuing a request for proposal (RFP)from prospective suppliers. The advent of the Internet has facilitatedthe use of electronic markets to dramatically improve the efficiency ofsourcing. Businesses are moving to electronic sourcing (e-Sourcing),electronic contract management, and electronic procurement practices inhopes of reducing or eliminating cost from the procurement process.Early systems provided the ability to easily run “reverse auctions”,i.e., an auction with one buyer and competing sellers, where a sourcingcontract was allocated to the buyer with the lowest price bid. Moreelaborate systems allowed for scoring rules to make adjustments tocapture buyer preferences, for example for one supplier over another.

A significant advance in recent years is provided by expressivesourcing, in which many different kinds of goods and services can besourced at the same time and with optimization used to determine theoptimal outcome of a sourcing event. Rather than pre-bundling goods andrunning one reverse auction for each bundle of goods (e.g., all surgicalknees), the use of expressive sourcing allows for surgical devices,generic drugs, and other medical suppliers to be flexibly sourced.Through appropriately designed bidding languages each supplier cansubmit bids on the goods and services that it wants to supply, and thesebids can then be combined at the end of the auction with optimizationused to determine the set of winning suppliers and an allocation ofgoods to suppliers to maximize business value to the buyer.

The bid of a supplier can be constructed in an expressive language thatallows for side-constraints, volume-based discounts, and otheradjustments. For example, the bid from a supplier might include thefollowing kinds of discounts and constraints: multi-item quantitydiscounts; e.g., if 1000 units of items A and B are procured then theunit price will fall by 5% on future purchases of A, B and C; multi-itemdollar-volume discounts; e.g., if $100,000 of items A and B are procuredthen the unit price will fall by 5% on future purchases of A, B and C;multi-item capacity constraints; e.g., I cannot supply more than 25shipments in total from ports A or B to C or D; multi-item market-sharediscounts; e.g., if my market-share of items A and B is at least 20%then I will provide a rebate of $50,000; growth-based discounts; e.g.,if the number of units of item A that I sell increases by 5% from thisyear then I will provide a rebate of $10,000; multi-item single-ordertiered pricing; e.g., if 1000 units each of items A and B are purchasedin a single purchase order then the per-unit price is 5% less; andpackage bids; e.g., if you buy an A to B trip at the same time as a B toA trip then my price is 10% less on that round trip (because the truckeravoids the “dead-head” cost.)

The sourcing event itself may also be multi-stage, with a second andsubsequent round of bid collection from prospective suppliers.

The outcome of a sourcing event specifies both an allocation of goods toeach supplier (i.e., the quantity of each good or service to bepurchased from each supplier during the course of a contract) the set ofwinning suppliers, and the bids provided by each winning supplier. Thisbid information includes for example all base prices along with anyadditional expressive bid information, such as described in the examplesabove.

In addition to specifying projected quantities of goods and servicesthat will be purchased during the term of a contract, the buyer (e.g.,the sourcing team) is also able to provide adjustments and constraintsthat are considered when determining the outcome of the sourcing event.Inputs provided by the buyer can include bid adjustments (for exampleimposing a 3% downward price adjustment on bids from incumbent suppliersto promote incumbents), or constraints (such as requiring a splitallocation against two or more suppliers, fixing some part of theallocation and not leaving it flexible, or a max-supplier constraint).

A computational optimization procedure is used to determine the outcomeof a sourcing event, in a process referred to as winner determination.This is the process by which the outcome of an event is determined. Thefinal outcome may be reached through an interactive process in which asourcing team explores the impact of different (bid-taker) adjustmentsand constraints, with the optimization used interactively to determinethe outcome.

Procurement Plans:

Typically, the sourcing and legal teams of a buyer do more thancontracting suppliers. They also generate some information related tothe intended or expected use of these contracts. A procurement plan isall the information possessed or produced by the buyer that is relatedto the future procurement to be made in connection with the procurementcontracts A procurement plan can also include information related to thefuture procurement by the buyer against non-contracted suppliers. Thenature of this information can vary widely. A plan for futureprocurement is often made in relation to a forecast of the futurequantities of the various items to be ordered, across all contractedsuppliers for each item. For example, “we forecast we will buy 1000units of item A in the year to come”. A few examples of procurementplans include:

-   -   an allocation of forecasted future quantities of items (e.g.,        goods or services) to the various contracted suppliers, as        absolute. For example, “we forecast we will buy 1000 units of        item A in the year to come, and we intend to order 350 units        from supplier X and 650 from supplier Y”. These quantities—here        350 and 650—are the target quantities: the goal is that the        actual quantities should be close to the target ones.    -   an allocation of forecasted future quantities of items (e.g.,        goods or services) to the various contracted suppliers, as        fractions of the actual total quantities. For example, “we        forecast we will buy 1000 units of item A in the year to come,        and we intend to order 35% of the actual quantity from supplier        X and 65% from supplier Y”. These fractions—here 35% and 65%—are        target fractions. The goal is that the actual fractions should        be close to the target ones.    -   some more or less flexible guidelines about how to use these        contracts. For example, “for item A, whenever possible, prefer        supplier X to supplier Y”.    -   Some strict rules about how to use these contracts. For example,        “when ordering item A, always ask supplier X first. Only if        supplier X is unable to deliver the requested goods can supplier        Y be given an order.”    -   Some rules about how to use a contract, making explicit use of a        target allocation specified by a procurement plan. For example,        if the sourcing team decided to allocate 35% of item A to        supplier X and 65% to supplier Y, such a rule could be: “if the        year-to-date fraction of A ordered from X is greater than 45%,        place any order of A to Y. If it is less than 25%, place any        order of A to X. Otherwise, use your personal judgment.”

This wide diversity should not hide the common characteristics of allthese plans: they all concern the future use of contracts,parameterizing different methods of future procurement that are operableto the plan. Typically, this information is kept privately by the buyer,although he may choose to share some of it to some suppliers (orsellers).

Procurement Systems:

At the end of a sourcing event the buyer enters into contracts with thesuppliers for items and pricing under certain terms and conditions.Around 75% of all business to business transactions are governed byformal contracts or trade agreements with a typical Fortune 100 companymaintaining between 20,000 and 40,000 active contracts. Contractscapture negotiated terms with suppliers, which may not be those exactlyidentified in a sourcing event. Contracts also provide a framework tomeasure operational and financial performance, while forming the basisfor regulatory compliance such as Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX).

Contract management systems provide a specialized digital documentrepository and also allow for the management of the “red-lining” processof contract negotiation and have sections for disclaimers and so on.Current contract management systems support “line-item prices”, i.e.fixed prices for different units of various goods and services. Eachcontract at a minimum has: a term (i.e., a range of valid dates), abuyer, a supplier, and a description of prices (e.g., line-item prices)for purchasing the items (e.g., goods, services) from the supplier forthe term. The current state-of-the-art contracting systems do nottypically capture all of the expressive or conditional offers that maybe selected at the outcome of sourcing and the associated expressivecontracts entered into with suppliers. For example, most contractmanagement systems fail to implement line-item volume quantitydiscounts, line-item dollar-volume discounts, quote-order line-itemvolume discounts, multi-item capacity, multi-item quantity volumediscounts, split allocations, and so on.

Upon completion of the contracting process the procurement system isconfigured. This is the system used by buyers within an organization topurchase goods and services on an ongoing basis. The procurement systemis typically populated at present with a line-item listing of the pricesto be paid for an item from a supplier. But current procurement systemsare not able to receive as an input the various forms of expressiveoffers, and associated expressive contracts, that are generated as theresult of the optimization-based expressive auctions used frequentlywithin sourcing.

This mismatch in expressiveness—between sourcing and procurement—is asource of inefficiency in current procurement processes. An example ofsuch inefficiency resulting from non-expressive procurement processes,i.e., one with non-expressive contracts, is that suppliers should beexpected to anticipate that volume discounts and other forms ofexpressiveness that are provided within an expressive sourcing eventwill be provided to buyers based only on forecasted quantities uponconclusion of sourcing, which may not in fact be realized. In the statusquo, the expressive bids, for example volume discounts that trigger atdifferent volume thresholds, are sometimes “flattened out” to a singleline-item price based on this forecast. The status quo at present isthat upon the outcome of a sourcing event the Chief Procurement Officer(CPO) within an organization reports a particular savings achieved,while the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) at the end of the year does noteventually see the savings. The mismatch could be for reasons notrelated to suboptimal procurement decisions, for example because thequantity of materials purchased was higher than anticipated, because thespot price of materials changed, or because an existing item wasreplaced with a different item and possibly at a different quantity. Butthis can also frequently occur because a volume discount was notrealized because procurement was made to the wrong contract, or becauseit was made to the correct contract but without triggering a new pricepoint to be updated within the procurement system. This differencebetween the savings numbers considered by the CPO and the CFO is the“savings leakage”.

The savings leakage can increase as the commodities become morestrategic and complex. Price discounts and other complex offers that arenegotiated via the sourcing event may be neglected during procurement.For example, whereas the intent of a sourcing team may be thatprocurement of one kind of good should be from supplier 1 and notsupplier 2 because it will trigger a volume discount at some futureaggregate spend quantity, this information may not be available toindividuals involved in procurement. It often takes an audit once amonth to catch the fact that a price change should have occurred. Oncefound, the buyer must prove to the supplier that the new price has beenachieved and then must get the supplier to update pricing. This oftenleads to a 30-120 day delay in getting the new lower pricing. Thissituation is compounded by the fact that typically the procurementsystems, sourcing systems, and finance systems (e.g., accounts-payable,accounts-receivable) are not interconnected, and moreover that in manycomplex organizations there are many different systems for one purpose(e.g., multiple purchase order applications). This leads to an inabilityto track contract utilization and makes supplier performance trackingcumbersome and time-consuming.

Contract Compliance:

Contract compliance is a general term that is traditionally used todescribe the process by which procurement decisions are validatedagainst the contracts generated upon the completion of a sourcing event.The current state of the art in contract compliance is to providetracking of procurement decisions and compare against quantity and priceprojections in order to monitor the “savings capture,” i.e., what amountof identified savings from sourcing are actually achieved or realizedduring procurement.

Current compliance systems are designed to perform monitoring of thepurchase orders that are generated by procurement systems, and will inturn generate reports that provide information about, withoutlimitation, the following kinds of concerns:

-   -   Maverick Buying: This occurs when a buyer purchases something        off contract. A purchase order contains an item that is under        contract, but the purchase order is not associated with this        contract or the item is under a contract with a different        supplier. The end effect is that the contracted price benefits        may not be achieved.    -   Purchase Order-Contract Price Discrepancy: The price that goes        out on a purchase order does not match the contract price.    -   Invoice-Purchase Order Price Discrepancy: The price from the        supplier on the invoice does not match the price on the purchase        order.    -   Contract utilization: Is the spend consistent with the        forecasted volume?

However, current contract compliance systems cannot handle the semanticsof expressive contracts.

In monitoring procurement decisions, compliance systems typicallymonitor the transaction network over which information such as purchaseorders flow. Information may be in the faun of contract XML (cXML)flowing over electronic clearing networks, or electronic datainterchange (EDI) standards over a closed network, or via purchaseorders (POs) and invoices exchanged between the buyer and the supplier.A PO originates from the procurement system and is sent back-and-forthwith the supplier until approved and accepted. When the items aredelivered, the supplier sends an invoice for the PO. This invoice isagain exchanged back and forth with the buyer until it is approved andaccepted.

Current compliance systems track purchases associated with POs and aredesigned to try to work around problems that can occur, such as POs withmissing material numbers or with only free-text descriptions. In somecases, POs may also be missing completely in which case information frominvoices can take their place. In some cases there may be no invoice atall, but just purchasing information provided to a compliance system bya supplier. All of this affects the degree of accuracy possible intracking the state of contracts. Methods from artificial intelligenceare sometimes adopted; e.g., to perform automated classification ofitems into different spend categories and to allow for reporting viathis taxonomy.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention is a system and method for compliance, executionand reoptimization (CER) against expressive contracts with suppliers,for example contracts that are created in a sourcing event.

By monitoring the sequence of procurement decisions made within anorganization, such as a firm, the execution state of each contract canbe tracked. The execution state is a record of all pertinent informationto determine both the correct cost of completed transactions and tosupport optimal future procurement and sourcing decisions. Oneexemplary, nonlimiting, way to track this procurement information is bymonitoring the flow of purchase orders within a firm's accounts payablesystem.

The CER system and method also collects additional relevant information,including for example current spot market or catalogue prices for items,as well as projections on the quantities of various goods and servicesthat are expected to be required in the future.

Given information about the state of each contract along with thisadditional information, the CER system and method provides a number offunctions. First, the CER system and method provides a means forcontract compliance through optimal reconciliation. Verifying that thecorrect payments have been made for completed transactions can involveoptimization, for example determining which of a set of possiblediscounts were valid and considering other constraints with complex(expressive) contracts. This process of ensuring compliance throughoptimal reconciliation serves the purpose of preventing “savingsleakage” wherein the current state of the art systems for procurementare unable to implement the savings available in the semantics ofcomplex contracts.

Second, the CER system and method provides a means for contractcompliance through optimal execution against expressive contracts. Theproblem addressed is one of myopic procurement decisions, for examplewhere a purchasing decision is made on the basis of the current contractprice and without considerations about either volume discounts thatcould trigger based on aggregate purchases over some period of time.This could make the supplier that appears (myopically) cheaper to bemore expensive over the long-run. Another example is when anorganization has contracted with multiple firms to provide for supplychain robustness against failure or other unexpected events, but one(perhaps cheaper) contract is myopically executed against by aprocurement team. The decision about optimal execution can also requireoptimization, factoring both constraints, adjustments and otherstrategic information in regards to favoring or disfavoring one supplierover another, and in addition condition future purchase projections.

Third, the CER system and method can support the process of contractreoptimization, both in reoptimizing an allocation of future purchasesagainst existing contracts and also determining when to accept newcontracts or use a sourcing event to collect additional bids fromsuppliers (current or prospective). The need for contract reoptimizationmay be triggered by new information, for example about spot prices orrevised demand projections, together with new offers from suppliers.Rather than leverage optimization for strategic decision making withinsourcing events, the system brings the benefits of optimal decisionmaking to a sourcing team on a continual basis given current andprospective contracts and the state of current contracts. Exampledecisions can include a shift of allocation among existing suppliers,the substitution of one supplier for a new supplier, and so forth.Contract reoptimization provides for a transformation from anevent-based sourcing process to a continual sourcing process.

Desirably, the CER system inter-operates with existing procurementsystems by monitoring transactions on a procurement transaction networkand performing real-time compliance, checking for maverick buying andvalidating payments against contracts. The system can be used togenerate “issues” that may be informational, or require an action, theseissues routed via a workflow system to appropriate users within a firmor organization. These issues can also be generated as and whentransactions (typically, purchase orders) cannot be correctlyidentified, so that data is cleaned in real-time.

Expressive Payment Reconciliation:

The invention is a computer-implemented method of conducting expressivepayment reconciliation for a buyer against expressive contracts on goodsor services comprising: (a) storing in a computer storage accessible toa processor of a computer data associated with a purchase transaction,wherein the purchase transaction data includes information about atleast the following: a seller and a set of at least one good or service,each of which has a quantity associated therewith; (b) the processoridentifying a contract against which the purchase transaction is madeand a payment amount for the purchase transaction; (c) storing in thecomputer storage data about the contract, where this contract dataspecifies at least one good or service, a seller, and a payment rule todetermine the payment for the purchase of at least one quantity of atleast one good or service that includes at least one of the following: awithin-order package price; a within-order tiered multi-item averageunit price; and a within-order tiered multi-item marginal unit price;(d) a processor of the computer determining a second payment amount forthe purchase transaction in step (a) based on the set of the at leastone good or service in step (a) and the data about the contract in step(c); (e) in the event that the first payment amount and second paymentamount are different, and in response to the processor automaticallyapproving a reconciliation action subject to one or more predeterminedrules or the processor receiving an external approval of areconciliation action, the processor taking one of the followingactions: creating a modified invoice with a modified payment amount;triggering a reconciliation payment equal to the payment difference;transmitting over a computer network an explanation of the modifiedpayment; and transmitting over a computer network a disputenotification.

Step (d) can include, if the payment determined in step (c) is differentfrom the payment amount of the purchase transaction in step (a), thenissuing a notification to a user of this difference, and receivingapproval or lack of approval from this user.

The data associated with the purchase transaction in step (a) caninclude information about one of the following elements: a reference tothe contract against which the purchase transaction is made, the time oforder, the delivery terms for the at least one good or service, and thepayment terms.

At least part of the data stored about the purchase transaction in step(a) an be based on at least one of the following sources: an invoice; abill of lading; and a record of payment.

The invention is also a computer-implemented method of conductingexpressive payment reconciliation for a buyer against expressivecontracts on goods or services comprising: (a) storing in computerstorage accessible to a processor of a computer data associated with apurchase transaction, wherein the purchase transaction data includesinformation about at least the following: a seller; and a set of atleast one good or service, each of which has a quantity associatedtherewith; (b) the processor identifying a first contract against whichthe purchase transaction is made and a first payment amount for thepurchase transaction; (c) storing in computer storage data about thefirst contract, wherein this data specifies at least the following: atleast one good or service, a payment rule to determine the payment forthe purchase of at least one quantity of at least one good or service,information about a plurality of purchases made against the contract,and a trigger condition and associated effect, wherein the triggercondition is responsive to the information about the plurality ofpurchases, and the effect causes one of the following: a payment tooccur, a payment associated with the purchase transaction in step (a) tochange, a future payment to change, a future payment contingent on afuture purchase transaction to change, or a constraint on allowablepurchases to change; (d) responsive to the purchase transaction data instep (a) and the data about the first contract in step (c), theprocessor determining a second payment amount for the purchasetransaction; (e) in the event that the first payment amount and secondpayment amount are different, and in response to the processorautomatically approving a reconciliation action subject to one or morepredetermined rules or the processor receiving an external approval of areconciliation action, the processor taking one of the followingactions: creating a modified invoice with a modified payment amount;triggering a reconciliation payment equal to the payment difference;transmitting over a computer network an explanation of the modifiedpayment; and transmitting over a computer network a disputenotification.

Step (e) can include, if the payment determined in step (d) is differentfrom the payment amount associated with the purchase transaction in step(a), then issuing a notification to a user of this difference, andreceiving approval or lack of approval from this user.

The data associated with the purchase transaction in step (a) canincludes at least one of the following: a reference to the contractagainst which the purchase transaction is made, an explanation of thepayment amount associated with the purchase transaction, the time theorder was placed, the delivery terms for the at least one good orservice, the payment terms.

At least part of the data stored about the purchase transaction in step(a) can be based on at least one of the following sources: an invoice; abill of lading; and a record of payment.

The trigger condition can include at least one of the following: thevolume quantity of at least one good or service, summed over a pluralityof purchase transactions associated with the first contract exceeds aquantity threshold; the monetary value of at least one good or service,summed over the payments of each of a plurality of purchase transactionsassociated with the first contract exceeds a value threshold, where thepayment in a purchase transaction is specified in a purchase transactionor determined by the payment rule associated with the first contract;the volume quantity of a first set of at least one good or service,summed over a first plurality of purchase transactions associated withthe first contract, when calculated as a fraction of the volume quantityof a second set of at least one good or service, summed over a secondset of at least one purchase transaction, exceeds a fractional-quantitythreshold; and the monetary value of a first set of at least one good orservice, summed over a first plurality of purchase transactionsassociated with the first contract, when calculated as a fraction of themonetary value of a second set of at least one good or service, summedover a second set of at least one purchase transaction, exceeds afractional-value threshold.

The effect associated with the trigger condition of the first contractcan include at least one of the following: a one-time payment due by thebuyer to the seller associated with the first contract or from theseller associated with the first contract to the buyer; a one-timepayment between the buyer and the seller associated with the firstcontract, where the amount and due date of this payment are responsiveto the history of purchases made in connection with the first contract;a one-time payment between the buyer and the seller associated with thefirst contract, where the amount and due date of this payment areresponsive to the history of purchases made in connection with the firstcontract, and to external data that is available to both the buyer andthe seller and whose origin is specified within the first contract, amodification of the payment for future purchases on at least one good orservice; a modification of the payment for future purchases on at leastone good or service, where the modification is responsive to the paymentamount for the good or service when the trigger condition is satisfied,and responsive to the history of purchases made in connection with thefirst contract; a modification of the payment for future purchases on atleast one good or service, where the modification is responsive to thepayment amount for the good or service when the trigger condition issatisfied, and responsive to the history of purchases made in connectionwith the first contract, and to external data that is available to boththe buyer and the seller and whose origin is specified within the firstcontract; and a modification of the payment to be made for a purchasetransaction that is associated with the trigger condition.

The external data can be a price index, a tariff, or a financial index.

The trigger condition and associated effect associated with the firstcontract can be one of the following: an across-order multi-itemdollar-volume anticipated discount, an across-order multi-itemdollar-volume state-based discount, an across-order multi-itemdollar-volume rebate, an across-order multi-item quantity-volumeanticipated discount, an across-order multi-item quantity-volumestate-based discount, an across-order multi-item quantity-volume rebate,an across-order multi-item market share anticipated discount, anacross-order multi-item market share state-based discount, anacross-order multi-item market share rebate, an across-order multi-itemgrowth-based anticipated discount, an across-order multi-itemgrowth-based state-based discount, and an across-order multi-itemgrowth-based rebate,

The second payment amount for the purchase transaction can be based on afirst forecast of a future quantity of at least one good or service tobe purchased against the first contract.

The trigger condition and associated effect stored in computer storageand associated with the first contract can includes one of thefollowing: an across-order multi-item dollar-volume anticipateddiscount, an across-order multi-item quantity-volume anticipateddiscount, an across-order multi-item market share anticipated discount,an across-order multi-item growth-based anticipated discount, and wherein step (d), in determining a second payment for the purchasetransaction that is responsive to the forecast of a future quantity ofat least one good or service to be purchased against this firstcontract, the payment for the current transaction depends on whether ornot the trigger condition for a discount or tiered price is forecastedto occur before the end of the term of the contract.

The processor determines the first forecast of a future quantity of atleast one good or service to be purchased against the first contract by:storing in computer storage data about a set of at least one additionalcontract, distinct from the first contract, where the data includesinformation about at least a seller and at least one good or service,storing in computer storage a second forecast of the future quantity ofat least one good or service to be purchased, storing in computerstorage a first procurement plan for future procurement against at leastone of the first contract and set of at least one additional contracts,and responsive to the procurement plan and to the second forecast of thefuture quantity of at least one good or service to be purchased, aprocessor determining the first forecast of the future quantity of atleast one good or service to be purchased against the first contract.

The processor can select a first plan for future procurement in a waythat is responsive to the data about the first contract and the set ofat least one additional contract, and to the forecast of the futurequantity of at least one good or service to be purchased.

The procurement plan can include at least one of the following: a targetquantity for at least one good or service to be purchased in connectionwith a contract during a time interval; a target quantity fraction forat least one good or service to be purchased in connection with acontract during a time interval relative to all purchases of the same orsubstitutable good or service; a target monetary amount for at least onegood or service to be purchased in connection with a contract during atime interval; a target monetary amount fraction for at least one goodor service to be purchased in connection with a contract during a timeinterval relative to all purchases of the same or substitutable good orservice; a specification of at least one purchase order such that in theevent that the purchase order occurs then procurement against aparticular contract is mandatory; a specification of at least onepurchase order such that in the event that the purchase order occursthen procurement against a particular contract is recommended; aspecification of a plurality of purchase orders and an alternation, suchthat in the event that the plurality of purchase orders occurs, thenprocurement of each purchase order against an alternation between aplurality of contracts is mandatory; and a specification of a pluralityof purchase orders and an alternation, such that in the event that theplurality of purchase orders occurs, then procurement of each purchaseorder against an alternation between a plurality of contracts isrecommended.

The selection of the first plan for future procurement can be based onat least one business rule that can be stored in computer storage.

The business rule can be one of the following: a split allocationconstraint, a price adjustment favoring or penalizing a seller, aconstraint on a maximum number of sellers to use for procurement, aconstraint on a minimum number of sellers to use for procurement, aconstraint on a minimum quantity of goods or services to be purchased inthe future from a seller, a constraint on a minimum monetary amount ofgoods or services to be purchased in the future from a seller, aconstraint on the maximum number of sellers under contract to which nofuture purchases will be made under a plan for future procurement, anadjustment of the payment for future purchase of at least one good orservice associated with at least one contract over an interval of time,a constraint on a minimum quantity of goods or services to be purchasedin the future from at least one seller over an interval of time, aconstraint on a minimum monetary amount of goods or services to bepurchased in the future from a seller, a constraint on a maximumquantity of goods or services to be purchased in the future from atleast one seller over an interval of time, a constraint on a maximummonetary amount of goods or services to be purchased in the future froma seller, a constraint on the maximum number of sellers from which goodsor services will be purchased according to a plan for future procurementover an interval of time, a constraint on the minimum number of sellersto which the volume of at least one good or service that will bepurchased according to a plan for future procurement exceeds a givenvolume threshold, a constraint on the minimum number of sellers to whichthe monetary amount of at least one good or service that will bepurchased according to a plan for future procurement exceeds a givenmonetary amount threshold, an internal cost to the buyer that is theeffect of a trigger condition associated with a contract, and aninternal cost to the buyer that is the effect of completing no futurepurchases with a seller under a plan for future procurement.

The first contract can be generated in a sourcing event in which aplurality of sellers compete through a bidding process to enter intocontracts with the buyer for future procurement of at least one good orservice.

The at least one business rule can be selected by in a way that isresponsive to the business rules used by the buyer within a sourcingevent in which a plurality of sellers compete through a bidding processto enter into contracts with the buyer for future procurement of atleast one good or service.

The selection of the first plan for future procurement can be based onat least one of the following: the current value or a forecast on thefuture value for the spot price for at least one good or service, andthe current value or a forecast on the future value of external datathat is available to both the buyer and the seller of at least onecontract, where the external data is specified within the contract.

The external data can be a price index, a tariff, or a financial index.

The selection of the first plan for future procurement can be made bythe processor outputting a candidate plan and receiving a first businessrule in response and selecting the first plan in a way that isresponsive to this first business rule.

The invention is also a computer-implemented method of conductingexpressive payment calculation against expressive contracts on goods orservices, comprising: (a) storing in computer storage accessible to aprocessor of a computer data associated with a plurality of purchasetransactions, wherein the data includes information about at least aquantity of at least one good or service; (b) for each purchasetransaction in the plurality of purchase transactions in (a), theprocessor identifying a contract against which the purchase transactionis made; (c) for each contract identified in step (b), storing incomputer storage data about at least the following: one good or serviceand a payment rule to determine the payment for the purchase of at leastone quantity of the at least one good or service; (d) storing incomputer storage additional data about a first contract from the set ofat least one contract identified in step (b), where this data includesat least the following: information about a plurality of purchases madeagainst the contract, and a trigger condition and associated effect,wherein the trigger condition is responsive to the information about theplurality of purchases, and the effect is to cause an immediate payment,change a payment associated with a purchase transaction, change a futurepayment or a future payment contingent on a future purchase transaction,or change a constraint on allowable purchases; (e) responsive to thedata associated with the plurality of purchase transactions in step (a),the data associated with each contract identified in step (c), and thedata about the first contract in step (d), the processor determining afirst payment amount for each or all purchase transactions in theplurality of purchase transactions in (a); (f) responsive to theprocessor automatically approving a payment action subject to one ormore predetermined rules or the processor receiving an external approvalof a payment action, the processor taking one of the following paymentactions: (i) creating an invoice with a payment amount responsive to thefirst payment amount determined in step (e) for at least one purchasetransaction; (ii) creating a payment whose amount is responsive to thefirst payment amount determined in step (e) for at least one purchasetransaction; and (iii) transmitting over a computer network anexplanation of the payment.

Step (b) can include identifying a second payment amount for each or forall purchase transaction, wherein: in response to taking the paymentaction of step (f)(i), the processor determines the payment amount inthe invoice based on the second payment amount on at least one purchasetransaction; and in response to taking the payment action step (f)(ii),the processor determines the payment amount based on the second paymentamount on at least one purchase transaction.

The trigger condition of the first contract can include one of thefollowing: a condition that is satisfied in the event that the volumequantity of at least one good or service, summed over a plurality ofpurchase transactions associated with the first contract exceeds aquantity threshold; a condition that is satisfied in the event that themonetary value of at least one good or service, summed over the paymentsof each of a plurality of purchase transactions associated with thefirst contract exceeds a value threshold, where the payment in apurchase transaction is specified in a purchase transaction ordetermined by the payment rule associated with the first contract; acondition that is satisfied in the event that the volume quantity of afirst set of at least one good or service, summed over a first pluralityof purchase transactions associated with the first contract, whencalculated as a fraction of the volume quantity of a second set of atleast one good or service, summed over a second set of at least onepurchase transaction, exceeds a fractional-quantity threshold; and acondition that is satisfied in the event that the monetary value of afirst set of at least one good or service, summed over a first pluralityof purchase transactions associated with the first contract, whencalculated as a fraction of the monetary value of a second set of atleast one good or service, summed over a second set of at least onepurchase transaction, exceeds a fractional-value threshold.

The effect associated with a trigger condition for the first contractcan include at least one of the following: a one-time payment due by thebuyer to the seller associated with the first contract or from theseller associated with the first contract to the buyer; a one-timepayment between the buyer and the seller associated with the firstcontract, where the amount and due date of this payment are responsiveto the history of purchases made in connection with the first contract;a one-time payment between the buyer and the seller associated with thefirst contract, where the amount and due date of this payment areresponsive to the history of purchases made in connection with the firstcontract, and to external data that is available to both the buyer andthe seller and whose origin is specified within the first contract, amodification of the payment for future purchases on at least one good orservice; a modification of the payment for future purchases on at leastone good or service, where the modification is responsive to the paymentamount for the good or service when the trigger condition is satisfied,and responsive to the history of purchases made in connection with thefirst contract; a modification of the payment for future purchases on atleast one good or service, where the modification is responsive to thepayment amount for the good or service when the trigger condition issatisfied, and responsive to the history of purchases made in connectionwith the first contract, and to external data that is available to boththe buyer and the seller and whose origin is specified within the firstcontract; a modification of the payment to be made for a purchasetransaction that is associated with the trigger condition; and amodification to a capacity constraint that limits the quantity volumethat a buyer can purchase on at least one good or service for futurepurchases.

The trigger condition and associated effect associated with the firstcontract can be one of the following: an across-order multi-itemdollar-volume anticipated discount; an across-order multi-itemdollar-volume state-based discount; an across-order multi-itemdollar-volume rebate; an across-order multi-item quantity-volumeanticipated discount; an across-order multi-item quantity-volumestate-based discount; an across-order multi-item quantity-volume rebate;an across-order multi-item market share anticipated discount; anacross-order multi-item market share state-based discount; anacross-order multi-item market share rebate; an across-order multi-itemgrowth-based anticipated discount; an across-order multi-itemgrowth-based state-based discount; and an across-order multi-itemgrowth-based rebate.

The plurality of purchase transactions in step (a) can include one ofthe following: all purchase transactions on at least one good or servicecompleted over a fixed period in time; or all purchase transactions toat least one seller completed over a fixed period in time.

The first contract in step (d) can be generated in a sourcing event inwhich a plurality of sellers compete through a bidding process to enterinto contracts with the buyer for future procurement of at least onegood or service.

Determining the first payment amount for each purchase transaction instep (e) can be based on a first forecast of a future quantity of atleast one good or service to be purchased against at least one contractin the set of at least one contract identified in step (b).

The processor determines the first forecast of a future quantity of atleast one good or service to be purchased against the at least onecontract by: storing in computer storage a second forecast of the futurequantity of at least one good or service to be purchased, and storing incomputer storage at least one additional contract, distinct from the setof at least one contract identified in step (b), responsive to the dataabout the set of at least one contract in step (b) and the at least oneadditional contract, and responsive to the forecast of the futurequantity of at least one good or service to be purchased, selecting afirst plan for future procurement against at least one contract from theset of at least one contract in step (b) and the at least one additionalcontract; and responsive to the first plan for future procurement, andthe second forecast of the future quantity of at least one good orservice to be purchased, determining the first forecast of the futurequantity of at least one good or service to be purchased against the atleast one contract.

The selection of the first plan for future procurement can be based onat least one business rule that can be stored in computer storage.

The at least one business rule can be selected in a way that isresponsive to the business rules used by the buyer within a sourcingevent in which a plurality of sellers compete through a bidding processto enter into contracts with the buyer for future procurement of atleast one good or service.

The selection of a first plan for future procurement can be based on atleast one of the following: the current value or a forecast on thefuture value for the spot price for at least one good or service; andthe current value or a forecast on the future value of external datathat is available to both the buyer and the seller of at least onecontract, where the external data is specified within the contract.

The selection of the first plan for future procurement can be made bythe processor outputting a candidate plan and receiving a first businessrule in response and selecting the first plan in a way that isresponsive to this first business rule.

In step (c), determining a payment for the purchase transaction, treesearch algorithms are used to identify a correct payment.

In step (c), determining a payment for the purchase transaction, a setof if-then rules are used to identify a correct payment.

In step (d), determining a payment for the purchase transaction, treesearch algorithms are used to identify a correct payment.

In step (d), determining a payment for the purchase transaction, a setof if-then rules are used to identify a correct payment.

In step (e), determining a payment for the plurality of purchasetransactions, tree search algorithms are used to identify a correctpayment.

In step (e), determining a payment for the plurality of purchasetransactions, a set of if-then rules are used to identify a correctpayment.

The contract identified in step (b) can be generated in a sourcing eventin which a plurality of sellers compete through a bidding process toenter into contracts with the buyer for future procurement of at leastone good or service.

The purchase transaction data can be determined by the computerprocessor in response to storing in the computer storage data about atleast one of the following: an invoice; a bill of lading; and a recordof payment.

At least part of the data stored about the first contract in step (c)can be based on at least one of the following sources: a supplier masterlist; an item master list; a suppler item price catalog; and a indexprice.

The information included in the data associated with the purchasetransaction in step (a) can be based on at least one of the following:data validation; and data cleaning.

The information included in the data associated with the purchasetransaction in step (a) can be generated through a process that includesat least one of the following: data validation; and data cleaning.

Historical data regarding a plurality of these contract reconciliationevents can be stored in computer storage. The method can be responsiveto the at least one of the following queries received from a user: thefrequency of occurrence of a difference in payment in step (d) for aparticular seller; the average dollar volume of difference in payment instep (d) for a particular supplier; the frequency of occurrence of adifference in payment in step (d) for a particular good or service; theaverage dollar volume of difference in payment in step (d) for aparticular good or service; the frequency of occurrence of a differencein payment in step (d) for purchase transactions completed by aparticular user; and the average dollar volume of difference in paymentin step (d) of claim 1 for purchase transactions completed by aparticular user.

The historical data can be stored in the computer storage.

Contract Execution:

The invention is a computer-implemented method of conducting contractexecution against expressive contracts comprising: (a) storing in thecomputer storage accessible to a processor of a computer data about aplurality of contracts, wherein the data about each contract specifiesat least the following: one good or service associated with thecontract; a payment rule to determine a payment for the purchase of atleast one quantity of at least one good or service under the contract;and a seller under the contract; and wherein the data about a first oneof the contracts also specifies information about a plurality ofpurchases made against the contract, and a trigger condition andassociated effect, wherein the trigger condition is based on informationabout the plurality of purchases, and the effect causes either: apayment to occur, a payment associated with a purchase transaction tochange, a future payment or a future payment contingent on a futurepurchase transaction to change, or a constraint on allowable purchasesto change; (b) storing in the computer storage data about a procurementplan; (c) storing in the computer storage data associated with apurchase request, wherein the purchase request data includes informationabout a first quantity of at least one good or service; (d) theprocessor of the computer determining a second quantity of one good orservice and a second contract against which to complete the purchaserequest based on the following: the procurement plan in step (b), thedata about the plurality of contracts, the trigger condition andassociated effect, the plurality of purchases made against the first oneof the contracts in step (a), and the quantity of at least one good orservice in step (c); (e) in response to the processor automaticallyapproving the second contract and the second quantity in step (d)subject to one or more predetermined rules or the processor receiving anapproval of the second contract and second quantity, the processorcausing a purchase order of the second quantity of the one good orservice to be placed to the supplier associated with the second contractin step (d).

The second quantity in step (d) can be the same as the first quantity instep (c).

The procurement plan in step (b) can include at least one of thefollowing: a target quantity for at least one good or service to bepurchased in connection with a contract during a time interval; a targetquantity fraction for at least one good or service to be purchased inconnection with a contract during a time interval relative to allpurchases of the same or substitutable good or service; a targetmonetary amount for at least one good or service to be purchased inconnection with a contract during a time interval; a target monetaryamount fraction for at least one good or service to be purchased inconnection with a contract during a time interval relative to allpurchases of the same or substitutable good or service; a specificationof at least one purchase order wherein, when the purchase order occurs,then procurement against a particular contract is mandatory; aspecification of at least one purchase order wherein, when the purchaseorder occurs, then procurement against a particular contract isrecommended; a specification of a plurality of purchase orders and analternation, wherein, when the plurality of purchase orders occurs, thenprocurement of each purchase order against an alternation between aplurality of contracts is mandatory; and a specification of a pluralityof purchase orders and an alternation, wherein, when the plurality ofpurchase orders occurs, then procurement of each purchase order againstan alternation between a plurality of contracts is recommended.

At least one of the plurality of contracts can be stored in the computerstorage by the processor in response to a sourcing event that is rununder the control of the processor, wherein the sourcing event includesa plurality of sellers competing through an electronic bidding processthat is under the control of the processor to enter into at least onecontract with the buyer for future procurement of at least one good orservice.

The procurement plan in step (b) can be stored in the computer storageby the processor in response to the determination by a processor thecomputer of a procurement plan that depends on at least one of thefollowing: a business rule, a forecast of a future quantity of at leastone good or service to be purchased, and the plurality of contracts instep (a).

In step (d), the processor can further determine a third contract athird quantity of the same good or service as for the second quantity.In step (e), in response to the processor automatically approving thethird contract and the third quantity from step (d) subject to one ormore predetermined rules or the processor receiving an approval of thethird contract, the processor can further cause a purchase order of thethird quantity of the same good or service as for the second quantity tobe place with the supplier associated with the third contract.

Step (c) can include the processor storing in the computer storage dataassociated with a plurality of purchase requests, wherein the data foreach purchase request includes information about at least a quantity ofat least one good or service. The processor can determine in step (d) atleast one second contract to which a second plurality of purchaserequests selected from the plurality of purchase requests is associated.In step (e), in response to the processor can automatically approvingthe second contract subject to one or more predetermined rules or theprocessor receiving an approval of the second contract, the processorcan cause a purchase order for at least one quantity of at least onegood or service to be placed with the supplier associated with thesecond contract.

The second quantity of the one good or service in step (d) can differentthan the first quantity of the same good or service in the purchaserequest in step (c).

The second quantity of one good or service in step (d) can be for a goodor service that does not appear in the purchase request data in step(c).

The second quantity of the one good or service can be determined basedon at least one trigger condition and effect in the second contract.

The second contract against which to complete the purchase request basedon the procurement plan in step (b) and the data about the plurality ofcontracts and the first one of the contracts in step (a) can bedetermined based on a forecast of a future quantity of at least one goodor service to be purchased stored in the computer storage.

The processor can determine the second contract and the second quantityof one good or service subject to at least one of the followingobjectives: minimizing the estimated total payment made by the buyer forthe forecast of a future purchase of goods or services to be purchased;and maximizing the estimated total value to the buyer, net of estimatedtotal payment, for the forecast of future purchase of goods or servicesto be purchased.

The processor can determine the second contract and second quantityagainst which to purchase the at least one good or service of thepurchase request in step (c) subject to the objective of minimizing thedifference between the purchase request and the procurement plan in step(b).

The processor can determine the second quantity of one good or servicesubject to at least one of the following objectives: minimizing theestimated total payment made by the buyer for the forecast of a futurepurchase of goods or services to be purchased; and maximizing theestimated total value to the buyer, net of estimated total payment, forthe forecast of future purchase of goods or services to be purchased.

The processor can determine the second quantity of one good or servicesubject to at least one of the following objectives: minimizing theestimated total payment made by the buyer for the forecast of a futurepurchase of goods or services to be purchased; and maximizing theestimated total value to the buyer, net of estimated total payment, forthe forecast of future purchase of goods or services to be purchased.

The processor can determine the second contract subject to the purchaserequest in step (c) not being split across more than a maximum number ofalternate contracts.

The trigger condition and effect associated with the first contractreceived in step (a) can include at least one of the following: anacross-order multi-item dollar-volume anticipated discount, anacross-order multi-item dollar-volume state-based discount, anacross-order multi-item dollar-volume rebate, an across-order multi-itemquantity-volume anticipated discount, an across-order multi-itemquantity-volume state-based discount, an across-order multi-itemquantity-volume rebate, an across-order multi-item market shareanticipated discount, an across-order multi-item market sharestate-based discount, an across-order multi-item market share rebate, anacross-order multi-item growth-based anticipated discount, anacross-order multi-item growth-based state-based discount, and anacross-order multi-item growth-based rebate

The trigger condition can include at least one of the followingconditions: the volume quantity of at least one good or service, summedover a set of at least one purchase transaction associated with thefirst contract, exceeds a quantity threshold; the monetary value of atleast one good or service, summed over the payments of each purchasetransaction of a set of at least one purchase transaction associatedwith the first contract, exceeds a value threshold, where the payment ina purchase transaction is specified in a purchase transaction ordetermined by the payment rule associated with the first contract; thevolume quantity of a first set of at least one good or service, summedover a first set of at least one purchase transaction associated withthe first contract, when calculated as a fraction of the volume quantityof a second set of at least one good or service, summed over a secondset of at least one purchase transaction, exceeds a fractional-quantitythreshold; and the monetary value of a first set of at least one good orservice, summed over a first set of at least one purchase transactionassociated with the first contract, when calculated as a fraction of themonetary value of a second set of at least one good or service, summedover a second set of at least one purchase transaction, exceeds afractional-value threshold.

The effect can include at least one of the following: a one-time paymentdue by the buyer to the seller associated with the first contract orfrom the seller associated with the first contract to the buyer; aone-time payment between the buyer and the seller associated with thefirst contract, where the amount and due date of this payment are basedon the history of purchases made in connection with the first contract;a one-time payment between the buyer and the seller associated with thefirst contract, where the amount and due date of this payment are basedon the history of purchases made in connection with the first contractand on external data whose origin is specified within the firstcontract; a change of a payment for future purchases on at least onegood or service; a change of a payment for future purchases on at leastone good or service based on a payment amount for the good or servicewhen the trigger condition is satisfied and on a history of purchasesmade in connection with the first contract; a change of a payment forfuture purchases on at least one good or service based on a paymentamount for the good or service when the trigger condition is satisfied,on a history of purchases made in connection with the first contract,and on external data that is specified within the first contract; achange of a payment to be made for a purchase transaction that isassociated with the trigger condition; and a change of a capacityconstraint that limits the quantity volume that a buyer can purchase onat least one good or service for future purchases.

The external data whose origin is specified within the first contractcan be either a price index, a tariff, or a financial index.

The data associated with the purchase request in step (c) can furtherinclude at least one of the following: a unique identifier to thecontrolling contract, an explanation of the payment amount associatedwith the purchase request, and information pertaining to the time oforder, delivery, or payment.

At least part of the data stored about the first contract in step (a)can be determined by the processor and depends on at least one of thefollowing: a supplier master list, an item master list, a suppler itemprice catalog, and an index price.

The information included in the data associated with the purchaserequest in step (c) can be determined by the processor and can includeat least one of the following: data validation, and data cleaning.

Data in regard to historical contract execution events can be stored inthe computer storage. Output reports can be generated by the processorin response to one of the following:

frequency of purchase order modification for a particular supplier,average long-term dollar volume saved in purchase order modification fora particular supplier, average short-term dollar volume saved inpurchase order modification for a particular supplier, frequency ofpurchase order modification for a particular good or service, averagelong-term dollar volume saved in purchase order modifications for aparticular good or service, average short-term dollar volume saved inpurchase order modifications for a particular good or service, frequencyof purchase order modification for a purchase transactions completed bya particular user, average long-term dollar volume saved in purchaseorder modifications for purchase transactions completed by a particularuser, and average short-term dollar volume saved in purchase ordermodifications for purchase transactions completed by a particular user.

The data in the database can be restricted by content to externalrequests that have correct credentials to access the content.

The one or more predetermined rules in step (e) can include at least oneof the following: a difference between (i) an estimated total paymentmade by the buyer for the forecast of a future purchase of goods orservices to be purchased under the procurement plan subject to the firstquantity of one good or service in step (c) being purchased from theseller indicated in the purchase request and (ii) an estimated totalpayment made by the buyer for the forecast of a future purchase of goodsor services to be purchased under the procurement plan subject to thesecond quantity of one good or service in step (d) is purchased from thesecond contract in step (d); and a difference between (i) the estimatedtotal value to the buyer, net of estimated total payment, for theforecast of future purchase of goods or services to be purchased underthe procurement plan subject to the first quantity of one good orservice in step (c) being purchased from the seller indicated in thepurchase request and (ii) the estimated total value to the buyer, net ofestimated total payment, for the forecast of future purchase of goods orservices to be purchased under the procurement plan subject to thesecond quantity of one good or service in step (d) is purchased from thesecond contract in step (d).

Reoptimization or Procurement Strategy Optimization:

The invention is a computer-implemented method of reoptimization orprocurement strategy optimization for a buyer against expressivecontracts on goods or services. The method comprises (a) storing in acomputer storage accessible to a processor of a computer data about aplurality of contracts, wherein the data about each contract specifiesat least the following: one good or service associated with thecontract, a payment rule to determine a payment for the purchase of atleast one quantity of at least one good or service under the contract,and a seller under the contract; and wherein the data about a first oneof the contracts also specifies a trigger condition and an associatedeffect, wherein the effect causes at least one of the following: apayment to occur, a future payment to change, a future payment to changecontingent on a purchase transaction, or a constraint on allowablepurchases to change; (b) storing in the computer storage a forecast of afuture quantity of at least one good or service to be purchased; (c) theprocessor of the computer determining a first plan for futureprocurement against at least one of the plurality of contracts in step(a) based on the good or service and the payment rule in step (a), thetrigger condition and the associated effect in step (a), and theforecast in step (b); and (d) responsive to the processor automaticallyapproving the first plan subject to one or more predetermined rules orthe processor receiving an approval of the first plan, the processorcausing the first plan to be adopted for future procurement.

The trigger condition can include at least one of the followingconditions: the time of a purchase transaction occurs subsequently to agiven point in time; the volume quantity of at least one good orservice, summed over a set of at least one purchase transactionassociated with the first contract, exceeds a quantity threshold; themonetary value of at least one good or service, summed over the paymentsof each purchase transaction of a set of at least one purchasetransaction associated with the first contract, exceeds a valuethreshold, where the payment in a purchase transaction is specified in apurchase transaction or determined by the payment rule associated withthe first contract; the volume quantity of a first set of at least onegood or service, summed over a first set of at least one purchasetransaction associated with the first contract, when calculated as afraction of the volume quantity of a second set of at least one good orservice, summed over a second set of at least one purchase transaction,exceeds a fractional-quantity threshold; and the monetary value of afirst set of at least one good or service, summed over a first set of atleast one purchase transaction associated with the first contract, whencalculated as a fraction of the monetary value of a second set of atleast one good or service, summed over a second set of at least onepurchase transaction, exceeds a fractional-value threshold.

The data about the first contract can further include information abouta history of purchases made in connection with the first contract, wherethe satisfaction of the trigger condition is based on said information.

The processor can determines the first plan subject to at least one ofthe following objectives: minimizing the estimated total payment made bythe buyer for the forecast of future purchase of goods or services to bepurchased under the first plan; and maximizing the estimated total valueto the buyer, net of estimated total payment, for the forecast of futurepurchase of goods or service in to be purchased under the first plan.

The first plan adopted for future procurement in step (d) can include atleast one of the following: a target quantity for at least one good orservice to be purchased in connection with a contract during a timeinterval; a target quantity fraction for at least one good or service tobe purchased in connection with a contract during a time intervalrelative to all purchases of the same or substitutable good or service;a target monetary amount for at least one good or service to bepurchased in connection with a contract during a time interval; a targetmonetary amount fraction for at least one good or service to bepurchased in connection with a contract during a time interval relativeto all purchases of the same or substitutable good or service; aspecification of at least one purchase order wherein, when the purchaseorder occurs, then procurement against a particular contract ismandatory; a specification of at least one purchase order wherein, whenthe purchase order occurs, then procurement against a particularcontract is recommended; a specification of a plurality of purchaseorders and an alternation, wherein, when the plurality of purchaseorders occurs, then procurement of each purchase order against analternation between a plurality of contracts is mandatory; and aspecification of a plurality of purchase orders and an alternation,wherein, when the plurality of purchase orders occurs, then procurementof each purchase order against an alternation between a plurality ofcontracts is recommended.

The effect can include at least one of the following: a payment due bythe buyer to the seller associated with the first contract or from theseller associated with the first contract to the buyer; a paymentbetween the buyer and the seller associated with the first contract,where the amount and due date of this payment are based on the historyof purchases made in connection with the first contract; a paymentbetween the buyer and the seller associated with the first contract,where the amount and due date of this payment are based on the historyof purchases made in connection with the first contract and on externaldata whose origin is specified within the first contract; a change of apayment for future purchases on at least one good or service; a changeof a payment for future purchases on at least one good or service basedon a payment amount for the good or service when the trigger conditionis satisfied and on a history of purchases made in connection with thefirst contract; a change of a payment for future purchases on at leastone good or service based on a payment amount for the good or servicewhen the trigger condition is satisfied, on a history of purchases madein connection with the first contract, and on external data that isspecified within the first contract; a change of a payment to be madefor a purchase transaction that is associated with the triggercondition; and a change of a capacity constraint that limits thequantity volume that a buyer can purchase on at least one good orservice for future purchases.

The external data whose origin is specified within the first contractcan be either a price index, a tariff, or a financial index.

The method can further include: the processor receiving a second planfor future procurement against at least one of the plurality ofcontracts in step (a); and the processor determining the first plan forfuture procurement based one at least one of the following: a quantitydifference of at least one good or service between the first plan andthe second plan; and a quality difference between the first plan and thesecond plan. The quality of each plan for future procurement can bedetermined based on at least one of the following: an estimated totalpayment to be made by the buyer for the forecast of future purchase ofgoods or services to be purchased under the plan; and the estimatedtotal value to the buyer, net of estimated total payment, for theforecast of future purchase of goods or service in claim 1 to bepurchased under the plan.

The first plan can be transmitted over a computer network.

The method can further include: storing in the computer storage a secondplan for future procurement against at least one of the plurality ofcontracts in step (a), wherein the one or more predetermined rules instep (d) includes at least one of the following: a quantity differenceof at least one good or service between the first plan and the secondplan; and a quality difference between the first plan and a second plan.The quality of each plan for future procurement can be determined bysubject to at least one of the following: an estimated total payment tobe made by the buyer for the forecast of future purchase of goods orservices to be purchased under the plan; and the estimated total valueto the buyer, net of estimated total payment, for the forecast of futurepurchase of goods or service to be purchased under the plan.

The method can further include: storing at least one business rule incomputer storage; and the processor determines the first plan based onthe business rule.

The business rule can be one of the following: a split allocationconstraint; a price adjustment favoring or penalizing a seller; aconstraint on a maximum number of sellers to use for procurement; aconstraint on a minimum number of sellers to use for procurement; aconstraint on a minimum quantity of at least one good or service to bepurchased in the future from a seller; a constraint on a minimummonetary amount of at least one good or service to be purchased in thefuture from a seller; a constraint on the maximum number of sellersunder contract to which no future purchases will be made under a planfor future procurement; an adjustment of the payment for futurepurchases of at least one good or service associated with at least onecontract over an interval of time; a constraint on a minimum quantity ofat least one good or service to be purchased in the future from at leastone seller over an interval of time; a constraint on a maximum quantityof at least one good or service to be purchased in the future from atleast one seller over an interval of time; a constraint on a minimummonetary amount of at least one good or service to be purchased in thefuture from at least one seller over an interval of time; a constrainton a maximum monetary amount of at least one good or service to bepurchased in the future from at least one seller over an interval oftime; a constraint on the maximum number of sellers from which goods orservices will be purchased according to a plan for future procurementover an interval of time; a constraint on the minimum number of sellersto which the volume of at least one good or service that will bepurchased according to a plan for future procurement exceeds a givenvolume threshold; a constraint on the minimum number of sellers to whichthe monetary amount of at least one good or service that will bepurchased according to a plan for future procurement exceeds a givenmonetary amount threshold; an internal cost to the buyer that is theeffect of a trigger condition associated with a contract; and aninternal cost to the buyer that is the effect of completing no futurepurchases with a seller under a plan for future procurement.

At least one of the plurality of contracts can be stored in the computerstorage in response to a sourcing event in which a plurality of sellerscompete through a computer network bidding process to enter into atleast one contract with the buyer for future procurement of at least onegood or service.

The storage of the at least one contract in the computer storage inresponse to the sourcing event can be based on a business rule which isstored in the computer storage and which is utilized by the processorwithin the sourcing event.

The storage of the at least one business rule in the computer storagecan be in responsive a sourcing event that utilizes the same or adifferent business rule, wherein the sourcing event includes a pluralityof sellers competing through an electronic bidding process that is underthe control of the processor to enter into at least one contract withthe buyer for future procurement of at least one good or service.

The method can further include the processor determining the first planin step (c) subject to a current value or a forecast on the future valuefor at least one of the following: a spot price for at least one good orservice; and external data whose origin is specified within the firstcontract. The external data whose origin is specified within the firstcontract can be either a price index, a tariff, or a financial index.

The determination of the plan for future procurement in step (c) can besubject to business rules that are received from a user.

Step (c) can include: the processor outputting a candidate plan; theprocessor receiving a first business rule in response to outputting thecandidate plan; and the processor determining the first plan subject tothe first business rule.

The method can further include the processor determining the first planin step (c) subject to at least one of the following: a bid from aseller specifying at least one contract that the seller would be willingto enter into with the buyer; and at least one offer from a seller tomodify at least one of the following: one of the trigger conditions, oneof the effects, or a payment rule in a current contract.

The invention is also a computer-implemented method of procurementstrategy optimization for a buyer against expressive contracts on goodsor services. The method comprises: (a) storing in a computer storageaccessible to a processor of a computer data about a plurality ofcontracts, wherein the data about each contract specifies at least thefollowing: one good or service associated with the contract, a paymentrule to determine a payment for the purchase of at least one quantity ofat least one good or service under the contract, and a seller under thecontract; and wherein the data about a first one of the contracts alsospecifies a trigger condition and an associated effect, wherein theeffect causes at least one of the following: a payment to occur, afuture payment to change, a future payment to change contingent on apurchase transaction, or a constraint on allowable purchases to change;(b) storing in the computer storage a forecast of a future quantity ofat least one good or service to be purchased; (c) the processor of thecomputer determining a first plan for future procurement against atleast one of the plurality of contracts in step (a) based on the good orservice and the payment rule in step (a), the trigger condition and theassociated effect in step (a), and the forecast in step (b); and (d)responsive to the first plan determined for future procurementdetermined in step (c), the processor: amending at least one contractstored in the computer storage in step (a), replacing at least onecontract stored in the computer storage in step (a) with an amended formthereof, or storing one or more new contracts in the computer storage.

Step (c) can include the processor outputting information that dependson the first plan. Step (d) can include the processor receiving one ofthe following in response to outputting the information that depends onthe first plan: the amendment to the contract stored in the computerstorage in step (a); the amended form of the at least one contractstored in the computer storage in step (a); or the one or more newcontracts.

The decision in step (d) to amend at least one contract stored in thecomputer storage can be based on at least one of the following: a spotprice on at least one good or service; a forecast of a future spot priceon at least one good or service; an estimate of bids received in asourcing event; and an estimate of the payment rules, and trigger andeffect conditions, in new contracts.

The method can further include: (e) storing in the computer storage asecond plan for future procurement against at least one of the pluralityof contracts stored in the computer storage, wherein the second plan iseither determined by the processor or received by the processor from anexternal source and is based on the forecast in step (b); and (f)responsive to the processor automatically approving the second plansubject to one or more predetermined rules or the processor receiving anapproval of the second plan, the processor causing the second plan to beadopted for future procurement.

The one or more new contracts in step (d) can be stored in the computerstorage by the processor in response to a sourcing event that includes aplurality of sellers competing through a networked bidding process toenter into at least one contract with the buyer for future procurementof at least one good or service.

The first plan for future procurement and the second plan for futureprocurement can each include at least one of the following: a targetquantity for at least one good or service to be purchased in connectionwith a contract during a time interval; a target quantity fraction forat least one good or service to be purchased in connection with acontract during a time interval relative to all purchases of the same orsubstitutable good or service; a target monetary amount for at least onegood or service to be purchased in connection with a contract during atime interval; a target monetary amount fraction for at least one goodor service to be purchased in connection with a contract during a timeinterval relative to all purchases of the same or substitutable good orservice; a specification of at least one purchase order such that in theevent that the purchase order occurs then procurement against aparticular contract is mandatory; a specification of at least onepurchase order such that in the event that the purchase order occursthen procurement against a particular contract is recommended; aspecification of a plurality of purchase orders and an alternation, suchthat in the event that the plurality of purchase orders occurs, thenprocurement of each purchase order against an alternation between aplurality of contracts is mandatory; and a specification of a pluralityof purchase orders and an alternation, such that in the event that theplurality of purchase orders occurs, then procurement of each purchaseorder against an alternation between a plurality of contracts isrecommended.

The second plan in step (e) can be further based on: a quantitydifference of at least one good or service between the first plan andthe second plan; and a quality difference between the first plan and thesecond plan. The quality of each plan for future procurement can bedetermined based on at least one of the following: an estimated totalpayment to be made by the buyer for the forecast of future purchase ofgoods or services to be purchased under the plan; and the estimatedtotal value to the buyer, net of estimated total payment, for theforecast of future purchase of goods or service to be purchased underthe plan.

The second plan or an explanation thereof can be transmitted over acomputer network to the buyer.

The one or more predetermined rules can be based on: a quantitydifference of at least one good or service between the first plan andthe second plan; and a quality difference between the first plan and thesecond plan. The quality of each plan for future procurement can bedetermined by at least one of the following: an estimated total paymentto be made by the buyer for the forecast of future purchase of goods orservices to be purchased under the plan; and the estimated total valueto the buyer, net of estimated total payment, for the forecast of futurepurchase of goods or service to be purchased under the plan.

The method can further include storing at least one business rule in thecomputer storage, wherein the processor causes the second plan to beadopted for future procurement based on the business rule.

The second plan for future procurement can be determined subject tobusiness rules that are received from the buyer.

The method can further include: the processor outputting a candidateplan; the processor receiving a first business rule in response tooutputting the candidate plan; and the processor causing the second planto be adopted subject to the first business rule.

The invention is also a computer-implemented method of procurementstrategy optimization for a buyer against expressive contracts on goodsor services. The method comprises: (a) storing in a computer storageaccessible to a processor of a computer data about a plurality ofcontracts, wherein the data about each contract specifies at least thefollowing: one good or service associated with the contract, a paymentrule to determine a payment for the purchase of at least one quantity ofat least one good or service under the contract, and a seller under thecontract; and wherein the data about a first one of the contracts alsospecifies a trigger condition and an associated effect, wherein theeffect causes at least one of the following: a payment to occur, afuture payment to change, a future payment to change contingent on apurchase transaction, or a constraint on allowable purchases to change;(b) storing in the computer storage data regarding a first plurality ofpurchase transactions completed in the past by following a firstprocurement plan against the plurality of contracts; (c) storing in thecomputer storage information regarding elements of at least one purchasetransaction of the first plurality of purchase transactions; (d) theprocessor determining a second plurality of purchase transactionssubject to the following: a change to at least one but not all of theelements in step (c), a total cost to the buyer, the good or service andpayment rule in step (a), the trigger condition and the associatedeffect in step (a), and the plurality of first purchase transactions instep (b); and (e) the processor storing in the computer storage a secondprocurement plan procurement plan against the plurality of contracts,wherein the second procurement plan can be determined subject to thefirst procurement plan and the second plurality of purchasetransactions.

The at least one element in step (d) can be the name of the seller.

The at least one element in step (d) is a purchase order. The secondplurality of purchase transactions in step (d) can be determined furthersubject to: the aggregate purchase of goods or services being the sameas in the first plurality of purchase transactions, and at least onerestriction on the allowable time period between the purchase of a goodor service in the first plurality of purchase transactions and thepurchase of the same good or service in the second plurality of purchasetransactions.

The at least one element in step (d) is the time the purchasetransaction was placed. The second plurality of purchase transactions instep (d) can be determined further subject to at least one restrictionon the allowable time period between a time at least one purchasetransaction was placed in the first plurality of purchase transactionsand a time a corresponding purchase transaction is placed in the secondplurality of purchase transactions.

The at least one element in step (d) can be a first good or service. Thesecond plurality of purchase transactions in step (d) can be determinedfurther subject to a substitution of a good or service in a purchasetransaction of the second plurality of purchase transactions for thefirst good or service in a corresponding purchase transaction of thefirst plurality of purchase transactions.

The method can further include storing in the computer storage at leastone business rule that imposes a constraint on the second plurality ofpurchase transactions.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 is a schematic illustration of a computer system that can beutilized in a standalone mode or as part of a computer network forimplementing the computer software that embodies the present invention;

FIG. 2 is a block diagram of a system for implementing contractcompliance in accordance with the present invention;

FIG. 3 is a system for implementing contract execution in accordancewith the present invention; and

FIG. 4 is a system for implementing reoptimization or procurementstrategy optimization in accordance with the present invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

The present invention will be described with reference to theaccompanying figures.

With reference to FIG. 1, the present invention is embodied in computersoftware which executes on one or more standalone or networked computers2. Each computer 2 includes a microprocessor or processor 4, a computerstorage 6, and an input/output system 8. Each computer 2 can alsoinclude a media drive 10, such as a disk drive, CD-ROM drive, and thelike. Media drive 10 can operate with a computer storage medium 12capable of storing the computer software that embodies the presentinvention, which computer software is able to configure and operatecomputer 2 in a manner to implement the present invention. Input/outputsystem 8 can include a keyboard 14, a mouse 16, and/or a display 18.Computer 2 is exemplary of standalone or network computers capable ofexecuting the computer software of the present invention and is not tobe construed as limiting the invention.

The compliance, execution and reoptimization (CER) system describedherein can do more than simply provide visibility into procurementdecisions and the degree to which they are compliant with contracts andprojected spend quantities against each contract. Herein, reoptimizationmay also be referred to a procurement strategy optimization.

In addition to providing visibility into procurement decisions and therelationship with the outcome of a sourcing event, the CER systemprovides for improved compliance through contract reconciliation,improved procurement decisions through optimal contract execution, andan improved sourcing process through optimal procurement strategyoptimization. Thus, the CER system leverages optimization technology indirectly reducing savings leakage by optimizing against contract termsgiven procurement decisions, in improving procurement decisions in thefirst place, and finally in integrating with the sourcing process byproviding procurement strategy optimization and guidance for strategicdecision-making in regard to new offers from suppliers.

To summarize, the following two aspects of contract compliance are notaddressed by current contract compliance systems:

-   -   Optimal payment reconciliation: For example, is the buyer        getting the multi-item discounts associated with bids from        winning suppliers in the sourcing event? The contracts signed at        the completion of the sourcing event may include discounts based        upon volume commitments across multiple items that are not        usually purchased in a single order, in which case the buyer        needs to periodically look at the purchase transactions and        check for applicable discounts and rebates. Compliance of this        form in the presence of expressive contracts requires        optimization, in order to ensure that the correct payments are        made to suppliers given a sequence of procurement decisions made        over some period of time.    -   Optimal execution: For example, is the buyer procuring goods or        services in a way that is consistent with the allocation of        forecast goods or services as determined at the outcome of the        sourcing event? If the contract management system and        procurement systems are unable to accurately implement the        discounts or rebates that the sourcing application was able to        negotiate, then the line-item pricing is inaccurate. There        should be a way to inform a buyer that he should be buying from        a different supplier if this is more advantageous. Again, this        can leverage optimization to allow procurement decisions to be        made that are optimal given an expressive contract and future        procurement projections.

The counterpoint of an optimal execution decision-support tool is abenchmarking tool which provides insight on the quality of pastexecution, a third feature not addressed by current systems:

-   -   Procurement strategy benchmarking: For example, did I purchase        my supplies last year in the best possible way given my        contracts and with the benefit of hindsight? In order for buyers        to gain trust in the recommendations of the execution decision        support tool, it is important they realize that the past        execution had room for improvement. Such an analysis tool could        consider all the spend made with respect to a number of expired        contracts, and compute the a posteriori optimal spend achievable        by reallocating the purchases to different suppliers or by        slightly anticipating some purchases so as to merge orders. If        the cost of the a posteriori optimum spend is far below the        actual, it suggests that either the forecasting team or the        procurement team is performing poorly.

An additional category of savings that current compliance systems areunable to take into account is the loss that comes from the contractsthat are fixed upon termination of the contracting process not being asstated at the outcome of the sourcing event. This could be because ofmanual negotiation of A) some of the pricing details that were alreadyset in the sourcing event, and B) the inclusion of additional elementsthat the sourcing event did not specify but a legal contract doesspecify. By coupling the outcome of a sourcing event with theprocurement process our system has the information to detect and reportlosses in category A. This enables more comprehensive contractcompliance and spend visibility than compliance and/or visibilitysystems that are not well integrated into sourcing events.

The fourth main functionality of the CER system is in regard toprocurement strategy optimization.

-   -   Procurement strategy optimization: For example, should I        reallocate future spend between existing contracts given current        contract utilization and revised projections about demand for        different goods and services? Should I accept a new offer from a        supplier given current contract utilization and future        projections? Should I end a relationship with an existing        supplier given current contract utilization and future        projections? Whereas current sourcing is event driven, wherein a        strategic decision for a category of purchases (or across        multiple categories) is made periodically and without recourse,        the CER system enables optimization to be used more frequently        for strategic decision making so that sourcing becomes a        continual process with a feedback loop from contracting. Another        strategic decision that can be supported is when to request new        bids from suppliers.

A side benefit of more effective procurement systems is thattransactional data is “cleaned” as transactions are performed, whichtogether with up-to-date data on completed and projected spend, andother information such as the number of price disputes with a supplier,enables a firm to be always “sourcing ready.”

Operationally, the compliance system can integrate with existingcontract management, procurement, and transaction networks. By carefulmonitoring of transactions the compliance system can monitor andreconcile purchases in real time by identifying discrepancies betweencontracts, POs, and invoices. Elements of expressive contracts includingmarket-share discounts and rebates, volume discounts, rebates andpenalty clauses can be acted upon automatically (in the case of aproblem).

The CER system can catch non-compliance issues as they occur and canresolve disputes before any payment happens through automated disputecreation and notifications at the transaction level. For example,aggregate volume rebates that trigger as new threshold volumes or spendlevels are achieved cannot be tracked by current systems in real timeand companies make incorrect payments due to their inability to capturethese rebates. Another benefit is in regard to accessorial charges,including such items as freight and tax charges. For example, ingenerating an invoice from a PO, a vendor will typically includeadditional information such as taxes, surcharges, freight, and so on asdictated by the government or a contract. Many current systems areunable to check the difference between a PO and an invoice in sufficientdetail, but instead just check that they are within some percentage ofeach other. If provided with freight tables, tax, surcharge informationthis can provide additional compliance and visibility.

One embodiment of the compliance system provides for issue notification,wherein disputes are identified, opened as an issue, and then trackeduntil resolved. This system can in turn allow for metrics to be trackedabout the performance of different buyers. The system can also allow forcollaborative issue resolution, with suppliers being able to accessinformation in a secure environment and in turn improve the speed withwhich issues can be resolved.

Reports can be generated to provide savings visibility by period,business unit and so forth in order to determine actual historic costsand set appropriate historic pricing metrics. The system can alsogenerate reports about what the savings leakage would be without thesystem to illustrate return on investment. Maverick spend can beidentified, with reports about which transactions are affected alongwith responsible buyers and suppliers. By tracking maverick spend, thesystem enables a user to improve contract coverage and increase savingsopportunities. The system can dynamically and visually report on totalspend, spend under contract, maverick spend, non-compliant spend and soon.

Illustrating the Need for Optimal Reconciliation:

The first problem identified is the lack of compliance that occurs whenincorrect payments are made to suppliers given the actual procurementdecisions made. For example, the terms of the contract may allow for adiscount to be triggered when a particular quantity threshold is reachedacross multiple purchase orders. But without a system to monitor thetotal spend and match it against contracts this discount will not becollected. There may also exist multiple possible discounts that couldbe used, and therefore exist the need for optimization to determine thebest payment terms.

Example 1 (non-compliance: rebates): A contract has a volume discount:item A @ $12/unit if between 1 and 50 units are purchased, item A @$11/unit if between 51 and 100 units are purchased, and item A @$10/unit if more than 101 units are purchased. This is the discountedprice for all units purchased.

Even if a procurement system updates the catalog with the correctongoing item price, based on the cumulative quantity purchased acrosspurchase orders the total payments will be incorrect. In the example,the item price would initially be $12/unit, with this price subsequentlyupdated to $11/unit and $10/unit. But upon an update from $12 to $11, acumulative rebate is due from the supplier for 50 @ $1=$50 for the 50units already purchased at $12. The buyer must track spend and know totrigger this rebate but current systems do not provide thisfunctionality.

Example 2 (non-compliance: discounts): A contract has a volume discount:item A @ $12/unit if between 1 and 50 units are purchased, item A @$11/unit if between 51 and 100 units are purchased, and item A @$10/unit if more than 101 units are purchased. This is the discountedprice for all units purchased.

One way to handle this contract in current procurement systems is topopulate the catalog with an item price based on a projection of thecumulative quantity that will be purchased, e.g., this might be a priceof $10/unit in the example. But the supplier must then track the spendand request a payment from the buyer if the quantity target is not met.For example, if the total quantity sourced in the lifetime of thecontract is 75 units then a payment of 75 @ $1=$75 should be made to thesupplier. Support for compliance of this form is not provided in currentsystems.

It is the balance of power between buyer and supplier in an industryoften determines the status-quo: if suppliers are powerful then rebatesare the norm, if buyers are powerful then discounts are the noun. Eitherway, there is a need to provide for optimal reconciliation to ensurethat correct payments are made between a buyer and a supplier over theterm of a contract.

The next example illustrates the challenge of determining which ofmultiple offers in a contract should be active to obtain the lowestprice.

Example 3 (selecting from multiple offers): The contract with supplier 1includes two discounts on the cumulative purchases made by the buyerduring the term of the contract, only one of which can be accepted. Inthis example, the choice of offer can be made at any time as long as thecontract is valid, and this choice can affect due payments for pastpurchases. Offer 1 provides a discount of 5% on all items except A and Bif more than 500 units of A and B are purchased at full price. Offer 2provides a discount of 10% on all units of A purchased. The undiscounteditem prices are $100 for items A and B and $20 for items C and D.

The buyer procures 500 units each of A and B and 2000 units each of Cand D. With offer 1, the total payment would be (1000 @ $100)+0.95*(4000@$20)=$176,000. With offer 2, the total payment would be (500 @$90)+(500 @ $100)+(4000 @ $20)=$175,000, which is the best deal.

The next example illustrates the use of forecasts in performingreconciliation. For example, suppose that at the end of each month theitems procured during the month—the spend—must be assigned once and forall to one of the offers from a supplier.

Example 4 (forecast-based reconciliation): The two offers from thesupplier are as in the previous example. But now the decision aboutwhich offer to leverage must be made after the procurement of 200 unitsof each of A and B and 1000 units of each of C and D have beenprocurement.

If the forecast is that at least 300 additional units each of A and Bwill be procured and at most 1000 additional units of each of C and Dthen offer 2 should be used. On the other hand, if the forecast is thatno more than 100 additional units of A will be procured and more than1000 additional units of each of C and D will be procured then offer 1should be used.

The previous examples relate to the inability of current procurementsystems to ensure compliance with contract payment terms as a result ofprocurement decisions made across multiple POs.

Similar problems can also occur even for purchases in a single PO whencontracts include within-order expressiveness, for example when there isa discount for purchasing a certain number of items or a combination ofitems at the same time within a single purchase order. This isillustrated in the following two examples.

Example 5 (within-order packages): Consider a contract with a price of$100 when items A, B and C are purchased simultaneously (a packageprice), along with individual item prices of $40 for each item.

A compliance system should ensure that a payment of $100 and not $120 ismade to the supplier in the event that these items (and perhaps others)are purchased within a single purchase order.

Example 6 (within-order tiered discounts): A contract might provide anitem price of $10 per unit for less than 100 units and $9 per unit for101+ units. Again, a compliance system should ensure that the correctline item price is adopted within a single purchase order, consideringthe within-order expressiveness of the contract and the quantities ofeach item in the purchase order.

Illustrating the Need for Optimal Contract Execution:

The second problem that we identify is that of myopic decision making,wherein individual procurement decisions are not optimal givenprojections about total spend against the contracts struck at theoutcome of a sourcing event. This motivates the need for a system tosupport optimal contract execution.

Current procurement systems are inexpressive and populated by a single“line item price” for each item. This price neither reflects the role ofthis item in discounts (e.g., on future purchases of this item or otheritems), nor the reason for including a supplier at the outcome of asourcing event, for instance a supplier might have a higher price but beincluded because it is an incumbent or to mitigate risk through a splitallocation.

Example 7 (split-allocation): The final sourcing allocation (identifiedat the completion of a sourcing event) includes two contracts:

-   -   Contract 1. From supplier 1 for item A @ $10/unit.    -   Contract 2. From supplier 2 for item B @ $12/unit for [1,50] and        @ $8/unit for [51,∞).

Split allocation 50 units from supplier 1 and 150 units from supplier 2.

The forecast adopted during sourcing is that 200 units will be purchasedaltogether. Note that it would be cheaper overall to purchase all 200units from contract 2 (given the discount on units 51-200), but thesplit allocation requires that supplier 1 is also used.

Current procurement systems will include both item prices (that fromsupplier 1 and that from supplier 2) in the catalog and all procurementdecisions of less than 100 items will typically be performed myopicallyagainst contract 1 at the cheaper price of $10/unit. One can see thatthe myopic procurement does not reflect the business rules that wereidentified by the buyer during the sourcing event; e.g., the goal ofsplitting allocation across multiple suppliers rather being completelydriven by price. Instead, with help of the CER system, a procurementplan should be decided that contains information, such as businessrules, so that following the plan will produce the splitting decidedduring sourcing.

Example 8 (multi-item volume discount): The final sourcing allocationincludes two contracts:

-   -   Contract 1. From supplier 1 for item A @ $10/unit.    -   Contract 2. From supplier 2 for item A @ $12/unit and item B @        $12/unit for total volume [1,50] and then A @ $10/unit and B @        $8/unit for total volume [51,∞).    -   Split-allocation: Buy 50 A from supplier 1, 50 A from supplier        2, 100 B from supplier 2.

Current procurement systems will include the item price of $10 for Afrom supplier 1, and $12 for A and B from supplier 2 in the catalog.Procurement decisions for item A will then be myopically made againstthe contract with supplier 1, and the total cost will be (100 @ $10)+(50@ $12)+(50 @ $8)=$2000. On the other hand, if 50 units of A were insteadprocured from supplier 2 then the total cost would be (50 @ $10)+(50$12)+(100 @ $8)=$1900.

These examples illustrate the problem that can occur when the paucity ofinformation in procurement systems leads to suboptimal, myopicprocurement decisions. A simpler problem can exist when the item priceitself is incorrect because the price is not correctly updated toreflect a new item price given a cumulative quantity purchased acrossorders.

Suboptimal procurement decisions can also be made within the context ofa single purchase order (PO). This is illustrated in the following twoexamples.

Example 9 (within-order packages: kits): Consider a contract with aprice of $100 for a package consisting of one unit of A, one unit of B,and one unit of C. Purchased separately, A, B, and C are priced at $40per unit.

An expressive procurement system should alert a buyer that submits arequest for items A and B that item C could be purchased for anadditional cost of $20.

Example 10 (within-order tiered pricing): Consider a contract with aunit price of $10 per item for 1 to 100 units and $9 per item for 101+units, where the lower price applies to every unit purchased.

An expressive procurement system should alert a buyer that submits arequest for 80 units that a volume discount exists for 101 units ormore. This could lead to less myopic decision making—where procurementis made in purchase orders of size at least 101 in order to leverage thediscount.

Illustrating the Need for Procurement Strategy Benchmarking:

Spend-analysis systems are reporting tools aiming at providing insighton what is bought and on the skills or the procurement teams. Some toolshave data-mining compatibilities aiming at finding opportunities forsavings, by changing some aspect of how the procurement was made in thepast. However, systems limited to line-item prices cannot take intoaccount the fact that a different buying strategy in the past could havetriggered different discounts.

Example 11 (uneducated buyers): Consider again the setting of example 8.Assume that, as forecasted, 100 items A and 100 items B were bought overthe contracts lifetimes. Suppose the buyers were being myopic, and spenda total of $2000 by buying all of A from supplier 1, because theyignored the recommendations of the optimal contract execution decisionsupport tool. We can quantify the loss to due this behavior, and usethis analysis to make the buyers aware of the consequences of theirbehavior.

Illustrating The Need for Procurement Strategy Optimization:

The third problem identified here is the need for procurement strategyoptimization, wherein rather than using periodic sourcing events,continual feedback from the procurement process can be used to triggerreoptimization. For example, a decision could be made to change thecurrent allocation of projected spend to contracts based on new marketprojections about demand and spot market prices. To give anotherexample, there could be an opportunity to accept an offer from a newsupplier and the optimal decision would require solving an optimizationproblem involving the current contracts, past procurement decisions, andprojected demand. Another element of a method for procurement strategyoptimization is to determine when to run a new sourcing event.

Example 11 (switching to a new supplier): A sourcing team closes anevent with a set of expressive offers and selects an allocation tosuppliers 1 and 2. But the offers from all suppliers in the event remainvalid for the next 6 months, and the sourcing team can reoptimize theallocation given new information about:

spot market prices

quantity projections

item requirements (new items, retired items, etc.)

For example, suppose that supplier 1 offers a unit price on A of $100per unit if at least 50 items of B are purchased, and $130 per unitotherwise. The price on item B is $110 per unit. Supplier 2 offers C for$50 per unit. Supplier 3 offers A for $110 per unit and B for $100 perunit and C for $60 per unit.

Given a projection to purchase 200 units of A and 50 units of B and 100units of C then the optimal sourcing decision is to procure A and B fromsupplier 1 and item C from supplier 2.

But suppose now that the projection for the demand for B is adjusteddownwards to 10 units, some time after the sourcing event. It would nowbe beneficial in procurement strategy optimization to allocate items Aand B to supplier 3 because the contracted price with supplier 1 will be$130 rather than $100 per unit of A when insufficient units of B arepurchased.

Example 12 (closing out a supplier): Suppose instead that the offersfrom losing suppliers during the sourcing event are no longer availableand cannot be considered for forming additional contracts. Nevertheless,procurement strategy optimization—where the allocation is shifted amongthe contracts that were signed with winning suppliers at the completionof the sourcing event—can be useful. In the example above, suppose thatsupplier 2 is also able to sell A for $110 per unit and B for $100 perunit. Then if at some point the projected demand for item B changes andis adjusted to 10 units from 50 units, the sourcing team could usereoptimization to tigger an allocation of all ongoing procurement tosupplier 2, and could also close the sourcing relationship with supplier1 altogether in the event that it is not providing useful riskmitigation or serving some other purpose.

Example 13 (evaluating an offer from a potential supplier): A sourcingteam closes an event with a set of expressive offers and selects anallocation to suppliers 1 and 2. But each month, additional offers arereceived from new suppliers. The sourcing team can use information aboutcurrent procurement and future projections to determine whether or notto accept the new offer.

Suppose as above that suppliers 1 and 2 were selected in the initialsourcing event. Supplier 1 offers a unit price on A of $100 per unit ifat least 50 items of B are purchased, and $130 per unit otherwise. Theprice on item B is $110 per unit. Supplier 2 offers C for $50 per unit.

Now suppose that a new supplier makes an offer subsequent to the eventto sell item A for $110 per unit, item B for $110 per unit, and item Cfor $40 per unit. But the offer is contingent on the supplier beingawarded at least 50% of the total dollar volume purchased on every item.

In the event that the demand projection is that 200 units of A, 110units of B, and 1000 units of C for the next year but that the sourcingteams wants to retain two suppliers on each item, then the optimaldecision would be to retain supplier 1 for around half of theprocurement of items A and B, and adopt the new supplier for theremaining amount of items A and B and the majority of item C, whileleaving supplier 2 with the remaining demand on item C in order to keepa split allocation and for risk mitigation purposes.

Background: The “Optimize and Dispatch” Framework”:

The “optimize-and-dispatch” framework described in U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 11/881,737, incorporated herein by reference,provides a method for dynamic resource allocation in the context oflong-term contracts and uncertainty about supply and demand. This isadditional background to the current invention in thatoptimize-and-dispatch is also concerned with coupling periodic,strategic optimization with ongoing, operational allocation decisions.There are however some significant differences.

A typical application suggested for optimize-and-dispatch is that ofInternet advertising. This is the process by which capacity on web pagessuch as those of content providers and search engine results is sold foradvertisements. But optimize-and-dispatch is also pertinent to thecurrent invention because it allows for the coupling of periodicoptimization within an “optimizer module”—to set the strategic directionfor allocating resources—with a continual dispatch process by a“dispatch module” that seeks to make period by period allocationdecisions consistent with the strategic direction set by the optimizer.

In application to Internet advertising, suppose that a web page isallocating advertisements dynamically to Internet users in order tomaximize revenue achieved from contracts from advertisers. Thesecontracts may represent expressive bids, for example a bid from anadvertiser who is only willing to appear if she receives an exclusiveallocation among other firms in a similar product category, and only ifthe number of impressions received in 1 month is at least 1 million. Theoptimizer module will periodically consider the state of eachcontract—the number of impressions of different kinds allocated to eachadvertiser—as well as alternate contracts and projections on futuresupply and demand, and determine how to configure the dispatcher moduleto allocate supply over the next period of time.

For example, the optimizer might instruct the dispatcher to allocate 20%of supply of type A to advertiser 1 and 80% to advertiser 2.

For each new web site access (=impression), the dispatcher thenconsiders both the detailed requirements of a bid and also theparameterization provided by the optimizer. For example, the class ofimpressions of type A may be more coarse than that which is reallydemanded by advertiser 1. When a unit of supply of type A is receivedthe dispatcher will first consider whether advertiser 1 is in factinterested. Only if both advertiser 1 and advertiser 2 is interested isthere a decision to make, with the dispatcher than dividing supply bythe 20:80 allocation policy.

In this way, the optimizer parameterizes a dispatch plan that isexecuted by the dispatcher. The dispatcher module allocates supply toeach contract in real-time as supply is realized, and perhaps alsoconsidering additional details specified by a bidder that preciselypinpoint desired resources.

Rather than environments with one seller and multiple buyers, thecurrent invention is focused on environments with one buyer and multiplesellers, where the dynamic decisions are in regard to which supplier tobuy which goods (or services) from. The set of contracts are withsuppliers, and procurement decisions are made in response to the dynamicrealization of demand within an organization. Procurement strategyoptimization provided by the CER system is related to theoptimize-and-dispatch system, where the optimizer is used periodicallyto reconfigure the dispatcher. Procurement strategy optimization takesthe place of the optimizer and allows for the allocation to bereoptimized as projected demand changes and in response to theavailability of new or modified contracts. In place of the dispatcher isthe procurement process. It is within procurement that short-term,tactical decisions are made about which contract to use for eachrealization of demand.

One departure from the optimize-and-dispatch framework is that the“dispatcher” of procurement is not truly automated, or programmable, inthe sense of the dispatcher. Rather, employees within a firm are theones that are responsible for the dispatch of the outcome of a sourcingevent. For example, consulting the prices on line items in a procurementsystem in making a decision or even going off contract and buying froman alternate supplier. An automated, programmable dispatcher wouldrequire a fully automated procurement system, with employees (or othersystems) determining demand but the procurement system automatingdecision making about which contracts to execute against. An additionaldeparture is that the “optimizer” of expressive sourcing is often ahuman-computer hybrid with human decision makers (=the sourcing team)involved in exploring different scenarios via constraints andadjustments before settling on a sourcing outcome.

But aside from the procurement strategy optimization provided by thisinvention, the additional functions of optimal reconciliation andoptimal execution are novel and non-obvious in view of theoptimize-and-dispatch framework.

The need for reconciliation within procurement is because payments aredetermined by procurement systems and subsequently collected by anaccounts payable systems without considering the full complexity ofexpressive contracts. Rather, the process of determining a PO and theninvoicing is limited typically to item prices as represented in a pricecatalog that instantiates the procurement system. It is this lack ofinformation that leads to the need for reconciliation.

By comparison, in the optimize-and-dispatch framework the payments thatmust be tracked by the optimizer—for example those that requirevisibility into the long-term state of a contract—are collected by theoptimizer, and not collected within the dispatcher. Payments are correctby design and there is no need for reconciliation. Payments collectedwithin the dispatcher are only those for which there is enoughinformation available at dispatch to determine correct payments.

Similarly, the need for optimal execution that is fulfilled by the CERsystem is not required in optimize-and-dispatch because the dispatcheris programmable and configured—and then reconfigured—to fulfill therequirements of the optimizer. As discussed earlier, optimal executionis a problem in contracting because the procurement process is executedby employees and may mismatch the intent of strategic decision making inregard to sourcing because of insufficient information about the outcomeof the sourcing event, bad alignment of interests, or other problemssuch as maverick buying.

Interfacing with the Contract and Procurement Process:

The CER system needs to be able to monitor the procurement process inorder to track the state of each contract and perform contractreconciliation, contract execution and procurement strategyoptimization. Similar to current compliance systems, one possibleapproach to monitoring is to connect to one or several database systemsthat contains records of purchases and payments. There may be a datawarehouse storing all information in one place, or it may be necessaryto connect with several systems. For example, connecting with an AccountPayable (AP) system may be required to retrieve payment data, andconnecting with a procurement system may be needed to retrieve POs. Thisand associated information in regard to contracts, POs and invoices aredescribed next.

An additional need for the CER system is information about the outcomeof the sourcing event and/or the contracting process in the form ofcontracts with suppliers, including all information pertaining to theexpressive bids from winning suppliers. The CER system also requiresvolume forecasts, and provides a method to allow a user to adjust thesevia import/export from another system or through direct input.

Receiving Information About Supplier Contracts:

The CER system requires an electronic form of contracts in order tosupport automated compliance, execution and reconciliation. Thiselectronic form should in particular be able to represent the contractsgenerated from the expressive bids from winning suppliers in a sourcingevent. In particular, more information is required that than provided tocurrent procurement systems, which is limited to information such asline item prices and single-order tiered prices. The CER system is alsoconnected to procurement systems in order to make adjustments tocontracted supplier prices, for example upon achieving a newacross-order volume tier. The CER system may make other corrections tothe information with the procurement system as and when they areidentified.

There are multiple methods by which contract information can be enteredinto the CER system, all of which can be roughly divided into thefollowing two categories:

-   -   Direct. The system used for e-sourcing can generate an        electronic representation of the contract in an export format        (EDI, cXML, Excel, etc.), tailored as appropriate to represent        the bids submitted by winning suppliers, i.e., the contracts        with suppliers that will be derived from these bids. This is        known as awarding-from-the-tool. This process might require, in        addition, information from sources such as a supplier's catalog        of prices and market prices.    -   Indirect. The information from the outcome of the sourcing event        may instead come indirectly, for example entered into the        contract compliance system manually upon termination of        additional negotiations with suppliers in finalizing contracts        (or, at this point via the same export and upload approach as in        the direct method.) To aid with this more indirect approach, an        e-sourcing system can be modified to generate natural language        from accepted offers (expressive and non-expressive) which could        be copied directly into contracts. This would provide benefits        in reducing savings leaking that can occur due to deals being        manually renegotiated, or otherwise changed between the outcome        of a sourcing event and the finalization of an actual contract.

The CER system described here is not a contract management system andneed not support “red-lining” of contracts and so on. On the other hand,the CER system needs to be able to detect changes in contracts if andwhen they occur. For this reason, once entered into the compliancesystem there is a need for contracts to be maintained and edited on anongoing basis by sourcing and procurement teams (e.g., new items,changes to line item prices, and so on).

When this is performed within an (external) contract management systemthen the system for contract compliance needs to be able to detect andimport these changes. Users can also create and edit relevant contractinformation (for example, as it relates to payment clauses) in the CERsystem through an interface. This could, for example, be a multi-stepprocess that guides the user through making a contract including all thecontract clauses. By “Master System” we refer to a database or otherstorage module that maintains information about items (i.e., goods andservices) and suppliers pertinent to contract compliance. The “master”indicates that this is the primary repository, with conflicts resolvedin favor of the Master System in the case of inconsistent data acrossmultiple databases or storage modules or other problems of dataintegrity.

Some elements of contracts that can be used by the CER system include,without limitation:

-   -   Master System Information: the name of the master system, the        key, and any other information needed to keep the two systems in        sync.    -   Contract Dates: start date, expiration date    -   Contract Limits: set the maximum PO amount for this contract        regardless of a user's spend limits.    -   Contract Forecasted Volumes: set the expected forecasted volumes        of the items to be purchased off this contract.    -   Contract Accessorials: these are charges that appear within an        order that affect total price; e.g., multi-stop charge, gas        surcharge, etc.    -   Supplier Item list: The list of all the supplier's Items is        maintained in a Supplier Item List.    -   Line-item Pricing: for each item in a contract, the single unit        price, or single-order dollar/unit volume tiered pricing. Some        items will enter into the contract or be removed from the        contract over the life of the contract. Line-item pricing can        change over the life of the contract as well.    -   Expressive pricing clauses: for example, contract term        dollar/unit volume tier pricing, and other clauses that provide        a special relationship between the buyer and supplier.

In entering expressive contract clauses, which as discussed above arenot typically maintained in structured (e.g., non free text form) incurrent contract management or procurement systems, these can similarlybe imported from an XML or Excel or some other format, or createdthrough a user interface. Over the term of a contract, these expressiveclauses may need to be updated or deleted, again typically with aneffective date.

Supported forms of expressive contract clauses include many forms ofconditional offers. A conditional offer consists of a trigger condition,which specifies in what case the offer applies, and an effect, whichdescribes what should happen when the offer applies. A few examplesinclude, without limitation:

-   -   Within-order single-item marginal tiered pricing: for a given        item A in a given order, the unit prices of the item are smaller        for items above a certain threshold. This smaller price applies        only to the excess, not to all the items order.    -   Within-order multi-item marginal tiered pricing: for a        collection of items in a given order, the unit prices of the        item are smaller for items above a certain threshold. This        smaller price applies only to the excess, not to all the items        order. Some convention about the ordering of the items of the        collection has to be specified.    -   Within-order multi-item average tiered pricing: for a collection        of items in a given order, the unit prices of the item are        smaller for items above a certain threshold. This smaller price        applies to all the items ordered, not just the excess.    -   Multi-item conditional unit volume (Conditional Units per Term):        If I am given a certain unit volume across a set of trigger        items, then I will give a discount/rebate to a set of discount        items using a schedule.    -   Multi-item conditional percentage unit volume (Conditional        Percentage Units per Term): If I am given a certain percentage        of unit volume across a set of trigger items, then I will give a        discount/rebate to a set of discount items using a schedule. The        condition must be satisfied at the end of the contract term.    -   Multi-Item conditional dollar volumes (Conditional Volume per        Term): If I am given a certain dollar volume across a set of        trigger items, then I will give a discount/rebate to a set of        discount items using a schedule.    -   Multi-Item conditional unit volume per order (Bulk Offers): A        conditional offer in which a supplier provides an incentive        (discount or rebate or bulk price) to the buyer based on a group        of items being purchased together at a set quantity per item per        order.    -   Market-Share Offer: A conditional offer in which a supplier        defines a market basket and time period and provides an        incentive (discount or rebate), in the same market-basket or a        different one, to the buyer for awarding them a defined % of        volume (units or dollars) in the defined market basket over the        time period.

As would be natural from the state-of-the-art on expressive sourcing,each of these expressive contract clauses could be combined withadditional conditions such as time intervals to restrict their validity.The precise semantics of these clauses can vary widely. For example, foreach of the above offers, the clause can be specified as:

-   -   A rebate: if the trigger condition for the offer is met, then        the seller owes an amount of money to the buyer.    -   An anticipated discount: the buyer claims that it will meet the        trigger condition for the offer at some point in time. On that        basis, the seller agrees to proceed as if the offer was already        effective, and keeps track of the total discount that the buyer        has benefited. If, at some date, the promise of the buyer has        not been met, then the buyer must pay back this total discount        to the seller. This amount is the discount liability.    -   A state-based discount: the buyer initially pays non-discounted        price. Once the trigger condition for the offer is met, he will        pay discounted prices. The effect is not retroactive: it will        affect only later transactions.    -   penalty-based commitment: somewhat similarly to the anticipated        discount scheme, the buyer commits to meet the trigger condition        of the offer at a certain point in time, and on that basis        receive discounted prices. If the buyer does not meet his        commitment, he then owes a penalty to the buyer those amount is        computed according to rules specified in the clause.

As the different implementations of offers above can be combined withthe different type of items, we then get a wide array of possibility,such as:

an across-order multi-item dollar-volume anticipated discount,

an across-order multi-item dollar-volume state-based discount,

an across-order multi-item dollar-volume rebate,

an across-order multi-item quantity-volume anticipated discount,

an across-order multi-item quantity-volume state-based discount,

an across-order multi-item quantity-volume rebate,

an across-order multi-item market share anticipated discount,

an across-order multi-item market share state-based discount,

an across-order multi-item market share rebate,

an across-order multi-item growth-based anticipated discount,

an across-order multi-item growth-based state-based discount,

an across-order multi-item growth-based rebate.

Additional forms of contract expressiveness include offers that applywithin a single PO, for example so-called “kit” or “package” offerswhere a set of items is priced to be purchased as a single unit:

-   -   Single-Price Packages: a set of items that if ordered together        at certain quantities in the same order, then the total price        for all the items together is discounted.    -   Line Item Package: a set of items that if ordered together at        certain quantities in the same order, then the line item price        is discounted.    -   Incumbent Incentive Offers.    -   Growth Offers: A conditional offer in which an incumbent        supplier defines a market basket and time period, then provides        an incentive (discount or rebate), in the same market-basket or        a different one, to the buyer based on growth over historic        figures in volume or market-share (in price or units) in that        market basket over that time period. The incumbent supplier has        the option of applying the incentive across all of the awarded        business or only the growth.

A supplier might also specify a multi-item capacity constraint, to statea capacity unit limitation on some set of items.

The CER system needs to be notified if a change occurs to the maincontract and also notify the procurement system of price changes thatoccur as the result of contract clauses being triggered. If the contractmanagement system supports notifications, the CER system canautomatically receive notifications of changes and get and import theupdates.

Organizations may sometimes also purchase goods or services without acontract in place, either on an ad hoc basis with a preferred vendor orthrough supplier-enabled catalogs or catalogs available throughthird-party providers.

In this case, these catalogs will also provide relevant information suchas line-item pricing, tiered pricing when purchasing multiple units in asingle PO, the price on packages of items in a single PO, and alsodetails of additional charges such as taxes and freight. On rareoccasions, a catalog will also have order (sometimes tiered) discountsthat are determined by considering a complete PO rather than justquantity in regard to a particular item in a PO, such as: (i) ordervalue—if the order value is a certain amount, a discount is applied;(ii) order quantity—if the total amount of quantity is purchased, then adiscount is applied; and (iii) order time—if the order is placed betweencertain hours or within a date range, then a discount is applied.

Tracking the Procurement Process:

The CER system needs to be able to keep track of the current state ofeach contract.

One embodiment of the CER system monitors the sequence of procurementdecisions within an organization by tracking the flow of POs andinvoices between buyers and suppliers.

The main transactional items generated during the procurement processare:

-   -   Purchase Order (PO): Created by the buyer and sent to a        supplier. If there is a contract in place for these items from        this supplier, then the PO may have been created from this        contract and it is associated with this contract. The supplier        may dispute the PO and send back to the buyer, process continues        until the PO is accepted by both buyer and supplier. A PO        generally contains at a minimum a supplier, a line-item listing        with pricing, and a PO price summary. Some POs may have no        direct price information, with the price information generated        instead by reference to a catalog of prices or the contract with        a supplier that specifies payment terms. Each line-item detail        includes: item description, item quantity, item price, and        line-item price. In some circumstances a line item will also        include the line-item adjustment, total line-item adjusted        price. The PO summary includes: the number of line items, the        total quantity, total line-item price (PO total). If adjustments        are included then it also includes: total line-item adjustments,        total line-item adjusted price, PO adjustment, and PO adjusted        price. The PO may or may not contain the contract identifier.    -   Invoice: An invoice is sent by a supplier to the buyer upon        delivering the goods or services. The buyer may dispute the        invoice for various reasons, sending an updated invoice to the        supplier. The supplier may dispute and send an updated invoice        back to the buyer. This process continues until the buyer and        supplier both accept the (modified) invoice. An Invoice contains        similar information as the PO. An Invoice generally contains at        a minimum: the original PO, if applicable (specifically, a        reference to the PO, e.g., PO number, a buyer, a supplier, a        line-item listing with pricing, and an invoice price summary.        Some Invoices will not include a reference to the PO. Each        line-item detail includes: item description, item quantity, item        price, line-item price. In some circumstances a line item will        also include the line-item adjustment, total line-item adjusted        price. The invoice summary includes: the number of line items,        the total quantity, total line-item price (invoice total). If        adjustments are included then it also includes: total line-item        adjustments, total line-item adjusted price, invoice adjustment,        invoice adjusted price that includes taxes, surcharges, freight,        etc which may not be specified within the POs. The invoice        usually does not, but may contain the contract identifier.    -   Bill of lading: A receipt of the items that were actually        delivered. There may be multiple Bills of Lading for a single PO        when the items needed to be delivered in multiple shipments.        -   Payment: Once the invoice is accepted, a payment is created            by the buyer and sent to the supplier. The payment usually            corresponds to the invoice received and is recorded in the            Accounts Payable (AP) System. The supplier may dispute the            payment, sending an updated payment request to the buyer.            The buyer may dispute the payment request and send an            updated payment request to the supplier. This process            continues until both the buyer and supplier accept the            (modified) payment at which point monies are exchanged and            the PO is closed, meaning that no further transactions are            required to be performed between buyer and seller in regard            to the PO.

All POs, invoices and payments go over some type of procurementtransaction network. This could be as simple as putting the records intothe buyer's accounting system from which they make payments from theirbank accounts. A procurement transaction is any communication betweenthe buyer and the supplier regarding a PO, invoice, bill of lading, orpayment. Each time the buyer and supplier contact one another regardingpurchasing some goods, there is a transaction or a record of thecommunication. Sometimes the record is only in the “Accounts payablesystem” and does not go between the parties directly. The transactionsare usually encoded via the Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) orCommerce eXtensible Markup Language (cXML) standards. Accounts payablesystems can usually export all the payment records into a variety offormats above including Excel/Comma Separated Values (CSV). A buyer mayhave multiple transaction networks with which to communicate withdifferent suppliers and vice versa.

Additional data that can be leveraged in configuring the CER systemincludes that from the Master System information, such as:

-   -   Supplier master list: The Supplier Master is a listing of        suppliers that the Buyer purchases goods from. It does not        contain the items the supplier supplies or the departments that        buy from this supplier. The suppliers in the Supplier Master may        or may not have an existing contract with the Buyer. A typical        entry in a Supplier Master would be supplier identifier,        supplier name, supplier DBA (Does Business As), supplier        category, supplier address, supplier billing address, supplier        shipping address, supplier sales contact, supplier billing        contact, and supplier shipping contact.    -   Item master list: A listing of items that describes each item.        It does not contain information about the supplier, price, or        the department that purchases it. A typical entry in an Item        Master would be item identifier, item name, item description,        unit of measure, unit size, unit quantity, classification,        manufacturer, and manufacturer SKU. For example a case 500 of        100 cc plastic syringes from Stryker Corporation could have:        item identifier ‘1’, item name ‘100 cc syringes’, item        description ‘case 500 of 100 cc plastic syringes’, unit of        measure ‘cc’, unit size ‘100’, unit quantity ‘500’,        classification ‘syringe’, manufacturer ‘Stryker’, manufacturer        SKU ‘123-2345643-09876’. So if 200 cases were purchased, the        Buyer would reference the item identifier ‘1’ with an order        quantity of 200.

The CER system need not be the system of record for items. When changesto the external item master has changed, the CER system needs to be ableto detect these changes and import the changes as required by a user.The CER system can also be used to augment the information that is notcaptured in the external item master by additional item attributes.These are attributes the user wants to keep about this item. This is notto be replicated in the item master system, but can be updated andviewed in the CER system. These additional attributes could be as simpleas the distribution center where they are delivered from, or morecomplex information such as the dimensions of the item. These additionalattributes can be used later in e-commerce sourcing events or to allowfor additional spend visibility by indexing in user generated reports.

Information associated with items in the item master includes:

-   -   General Item Information: name, UNSPEC, short description, long        description, active or not.    -   Master System Information: the name of the master system, the        key, and any other information needed to keep the two systems in        sync. It also includes all the information from the master        system if it is available.    -   Item Availability Dates: this are the dates when the item is        available and when it expires. When the item expires the user        can supply another item as the ‘replacement’ item.    -   Contractual Attributes: these attributes are aggregate        information across all the contracts in the system that use this        item, and include information such as the total number of        contracts, number of unexpired contracts, total dollar volume        across all contracts, total number of disputes, total number of        purchase orders, and so forth.

In one embodiment of the CER system, the various transactions related topurchases (POs, invoices, and payments) are monitored as they arecreated and transferred between the different software systems. Whentransactions start coming into the application, then a standard processof data validation and data cleaning can be put in place to deal withmissing information as and when this occurs. Data validation refers tochecking that received information is consistent, in itself or withother information stored. Data cleaning consist of proceeding to minoradjustments to the received data, for example to consolidate suppliernames and addresses into canonical forms. To illustrate this, a typicalprocess can occur as follows:

-   -   The transaction is identified by the origination source        (system), originating department, the transaction type (PO,        invoice, etc.). If no transaction type can be determined it is        assumed to be a “general” transaction. If a transaction        validation issue arises, then a dispute is automatically        generated. This is a transaction validation dispute.    -   Once identified by transaction type, the transaction needs to be        validated against its appropriate format and the individual        elements of the transaction need to be validated for proper        format and simple validation rules (e.g., a string, number,        etc.) If a transaction format validation issue arises, then a        dispute is automatically generated. This is a format validation        dispute.    -   Once the elements are validated, an associative validation is        done regarding its association with contract, PO, or invoice and        possibly the supplier and the buyer. This association is then        validated against the information in the application. If a        transaction association validation issue arises, then a dispute        is automatically generated. This is an association validation        dispute.    -   Finally, the line-item information is checked for cleanliness.        This is meant to determine if the system is able to match the        line-item with an item in the item master. If a transaction        cleaning issue arises, then a dispute is automatically        generated. This is a cleansing dispute.

The basic information in a transaction includes the timestamp, buyer,the supplier, the contract, and the line items. The supplier informationcorresponds to that in the procurement system, the line-items correspondto that in the item master, and the contract corresponds to that in thecontract management system. From above, the basic operations of the CERsystem upon recognizing a transaction include: (a) validation of format,(b) cleaning, (c) normalization, (d) de-duplication, and (e) enrichment.

Given an invoice, the CER system needs to validate if a contractexists—this the first compliance issue (maverick buying). The systemthen needs to validate against the PO and validate if the invoice isoptimal given the past transactions and the existing awards allocationand suggest changes to reduce cost. Given a PO the system needs tosimilarly validate against the contract and determine that pricing iscorrect. Given that the CER system has the award allocation, as suppliedfrom the sourcing application together with details about expressivebids, along with an association with the buyers, suppliers, items, andthe contracts from the other systems, then compliance can be managedwithout ambiguity within the CER system.

At any stage an issue may arise and someone needs to look at thetransaction and make a decision as to what to do. Different users may beinvolved at different stages based upon their responsibilities. Whendiscrepancies are found, a dispute (or issue) is created and theoriginator is notified and an owner is assigned to the dispute. Anupdate to the transaction can then be made in the existing procurementsystem and recognized by the CER system. For example, upon a new disputebeing generated by the compliance system, the Buyer could go back intothe procurement system and update the PO appropriately. Similarly forinvoices, the system can reconcile the non-compliant invoices with theoriginal purchase orders and the award allocations and notify theaccounting team. The accounting team can then make appropriate changesin the procurement or accounts payable system until complete. Any timethere is a discrepancy in the PO, invoice, or the payment either partymay raise a dispute. These disputes need to be tracked and resolved.Each dispute has a potential monetary value (initial value in dispute),actual monetary value (resolved value in dispute), and a time span (timefrom creation to resolution). All these items can be analyzed todetermine the value of the dispute and the value of the disputeresolution system.

In the process of resolving disputes, it might be necessary to updateinformation about the contract with a supplier. For example:

-   -   A PO includes an item is not included in a contract, then the        user would have the opportunity to add the item into the        contract with an effective date and line-item pricing. If the        item is associated with any of the contract clauses, they should        be identified.    -   There has been a line item price change, in which case the        system can give the user an option to accept the new price with        an effective date.

Edits made to contracts must be tracked and audited so that they can bereconciled with prior POs, invoices, or payments. This can be a simplereport showing the contract component at the time and the POs affected.

Contract Visibility, Issue Notification and Workflow:

Rather than fully automating all functionality, for example takingactions to alter line-item prices in the procurement system or triggerrebate requests, one embodiment of the CER system will generatenotifications for members of a procurement team, for them to then actupon or ignore as deemed appropriate.

For example, there are may be three basic kinds of issues that canoccur:

-   -   Informational item. An informational item is an issue that is        simply information about what the system has done. If a user        gets a notification on an information issue, the user does not        need to make any action at this time. For example, if a purchase        order exceeds a user's spend limit, then an informational issue        is created. An information issue could also be generated when a        contract is getting close to an aggregate tiered volume        discount.    -   Action item. An action item is an issue that requires the user        to do something or verify that what the system has done is        correct. For example, this can occur when a PO comes in and the        system cannot identify (match) to an existing supplier. The        system would create a new supplier with this name and proceed        although it may match an existing supplier. The person assigned        the action item would need to enter the system and validate as a        new supplier or match to an existing supplier.    -   A special type of actionable issue is a validation issue. A        validation issue occurs when the transactions are imported or        read into the system. If a transaction fails to be validated        against the appropriate EDI standard, cXML standard, then an        issue arises. Another example of an action item, is one that is        generated when the monitoring system is cleaning data and there        is uncertainty about whether the correct item or the correct        contract has been identified.    -   Dispute item. A dispute item is simply an actionable item that        arises in processing a PO, invoice, or payment that has a        monetary value to it. This could be a line-item price that does        not match, an accessorial is added that should not have been        added, and so on. Another example of a dispute issue is when the        payments made to a supplier seem incorrect given contract terms.

By leveraging this notification approach, the CER system can benon-invasive in that it does not disrupt or change the process a companyhas in procuring goods, but can instead be used in conjunction withexisting processes and only interjects itself when a discrepancy (ordispute) is found.

As transactions are read, they are validated against the contracts.Validation would include verifying an existing valid contract, verifyingthat the item is included in the contract, and then validating that thepricing is consistent with the contract, purchase order, invoice, andpayment and all of the appropriate combinations. If any errors arefound, the originator and owner of the originating system are notifiedof the issue and it is resolved. Issues need not halt the procurementprocess, but may instead queued to be acted upon. For example, a costcompliance dispute on an invoice or cost compliance dispute on a paymentneed not stop the item from being delivered or an invoice to be paid.

This process has the additional benefit of cleaning the data as it flowsthrough the system allowing firms to be always “sourcing ready” withgood data to form the basis of a new sourcing event.

Many events may occur during the course of a contracts lifetime (e.g.,contract update, contract clause near full utilization, contract clauseupdated, purchase order created, purchase order updated, etc.) but notall are of the same importance. For this reason, the system can bedesigned to allow users to view existing notification schemes, create anew notification scheme, edit a notification scheme, delete anotification scheme and associate and disassociate a notification schemewith a contract.

Issues may be tracked through inception to resolution, stored, andsearchable throughout the system. Associated with an issue can beinformation such as its status, the ownership information (current ownerand due dates, what is next change should have, when is this changeexpected, what is the due date for a change), issue creationinformation, issue resolution information, monetary information(expected savings, actual savings, percent of expected savings), changehistory and relationships (to associated contracts, POs, invoices,payments, spend category, supplier etc.).

If a transaction that is being processed fails any of the compliancechecks, then an issue of the appropriate type is created, an ownerassigned (in accordance with the scheme), and appropriate notificationssent out (according to the notification scheme). Notifications caninclude a link to the notification in the system and if a dispute or anaction item, the actions that need to be taken and by when. If no actionis taken by the date, then the action item or dispute can be escalatedto the contract owner, and then finally to the contract administrator.

A permission scheme can be used to determine which users can see whichissues, and users can be provided with a portal (or “dashboard”) totrack and manage issues and notifications. A user can be provided withthe ability to search and view the issues they have access to, based onthe type of issue (e.g., date, status, supplier, since last action, bycontract or contract clauses, by monetary savings amount, and so on.) Auser should also be able to drill down into information about a supplierin regard to issues, for example: summary information on the contractsfor a supplier (total number, number expired, contract utilization),summary information on the POs, invoice, and payments by status andamount, summary information on the disputes (total number, number bystatus, ROI on the disputes, anticipated ROI on the disputes, etc.),along with views of contracts, POs, invoices, payments and disputes.

The issue notification system can be integrated with a workflow systemto determine how to route issues. Various parties can include contractadministrators (with responsibility to contracts), procurement users(with responsibility to POs and invoices), category managers (withresponsibility to spend in a category), suppler managers (withresponsibility to supplier relations), and senior management withread-only access. The CER system can generate notification alerts androute to the appropriate person, for example notifying a contractadministrator if the spend is close to discount/rebate tiers.

A user may want to generate views of issues in regard to a particularitem, including (a) summary information on the contracts for this item(total number, number expired, contract utilization), (b) summaryinformation on the POs, invoice, and payments by status and amount thatcontain this item, (c) summary information on item pricing (minimum,maximum, average, median), (d) summary information on the disputes(total number, number by status, ROI on the disputes, anticipated ROI onthe disputes, etc.), (e) time-series for an item price and metrics suchas minimum, maximum, median, average, and various percentile statistics.One embodiment of the system can also allow a user to compare metricsfor transactions against historic costs to determine saving, and alsoaccess reports to show the transaction volume and costs over thelifetime of the contract.

A user may also view information in regard to a particular contract, forexample: summary information about disputes, POs, invoices and so forth;as well as contract utilization information itemized in various ways(overall, by category, by line-item, by contract clause and so forth);and comparisons between contract forecasts and actual procurementvolume.

In viewing contract information, a user can in turn perform maintenancetasks in regard to a supplier's item list, and associated line-itempricing, including tiered-pricing by unit volume within an order,tiered-pricing by dollar volume within an order, tiered-pricing by unitvolume over the contract term, and tiered-pricing by dollar volume overthe contract term. These changes can be made via import/export throughformats such as Excel or cXML, or a user interface to a hosted service.When price changes are entered the user can also specify the start datefor the price change, which effectively sets the end date for the priorpricing on the line-item. If an existing price is changed this istracked so that they can be audited and reconciled against POs,invoices, or payments already in the CER system. Similar principlesapply for other contract information along with accessorials that canapply to an item or to an order.

Suppliers can also be given access to the monitoring system, for examplein order to: (i) view and update their supplier information, which couldtrigger an action item to a user on a procurement team, (ii) search andview any of their contracts, (iii) search and view any issues againsttheir contracts, (iv) manage and resolve issues assigned to them, and(v) search and view any of their notifications. A supplier could alsosearch across all the disputes by owner and status, as they relate tothe supplier, and respond to disputes within the system. In this way,some of the maintenance work performed by the buyer can be usefullyshifted to a supplier. A supplier can also be provided with informationabout where the accumulated procurement quantity in a contract isrelative to discount and rebate levels. This can help with disputeresolution by providing improved transparency and provide access toinformation, for example about market shares as relevant to market-shareclauses within a contract.

The CER system described above includes a contractcompliance/reconciliation module or a subsystem, a contract executionmodule or subsystem, and a procurement strategy optimization module orsubsystem. These modules can operate independently or collectively toimplement the present invention. The function of each of these modulesor subsystems will now be described.

Enabling Expressive Payment Reconciliation:

FIG. 2 illustrates the use of the CER system for contract compliancethrough optimal expressive payment reconciliation of payments againstaggregate purchases. The contract compliance module or subsystem of theCER system is utilized to realize optimal reconciliation of paymentsagainst aggregate purchases. In FIG. 2, a procurement system generatesPOs that flow to the accounts-receivable/accounts-payable (ARAP) system.The ARAP system is typically connected to the ARAP system of suppliers.As discussed above, it is in response to a PO that an invoice isgenerated, and then finally a payment is made. There can be aback-and-forth during these steps, until buyer and supplier reachagreement on terms. In FIGS. 2-4, the CER system, the ARAP system, theprocurement system, and the sourcing system are shown as separateblocks. However, this is not to be construed as limiting the inventionsince any one or combination of functions typically performed by any ofthese systems can be realized in one or more standalone or networkedcomputers 2 of the type shown in FIG. 1. Accordingly, the illustrationin FIGS. 2-4 of the CER system, the ARAP system, the procurement system,and the sourcing system as being separate blocks is not to be construedas limiting the invention. For example, two or more of the systems shownin FIGS. 2-4 can be realized in a standalone or network computer 2wherein each system is realized as a separate module within computer 2.Thus, the description hereinafter of one system monitoring anothersystem, receiving information from the other system, or dispatchinginformation to the other system is to be understood to mean that saidmonitoring occurs between two or more modules operating on a singlecomputer, like computer 2 shown in FIG. 1.

It should be noted that what systems companies have vary widely, and asa consequence the way the CER system will connect to the other systemsin place will too. A few variations are:

-   -   If procurement systems are disparate and the ARAP system does        not store POs, but the ARAP system stores all invoices received        from suppliers. In this case, the CER system may connect with        the ARAP and access the invoicing data, but not the POs.    -   The compliance system may retrieve the required data from a data        warehouse.    -   It can also be that the ARAP stores payment information but not        invoices, which may be found in the procurement system. In this        case the CER system would have to connect to both systems to get        the necessary data.

The compliance subsystem of the CER system monitors the ARAP system andreceives information about POs and invoices. This information allows thecompliance subsystem to track the state of each contract, e.g., eachcontract determined from the output of a sourcing system, including thegoods (or services) purchased within each PO from each supplier, and theflow of payments made to a supplier. The ARAP system is also used toimplement payments in the event that reconciliation is required due toan inconsistency between POs and invoices, invoices and payments, orpayments and contracts. This can be achieved through a special-purposePO/invoice, for example with an appropriate code to signify the purpose,and including any information provided by the compliance subsystem byway of explanation.

The compliance subsystem receives volume forecast information from usersor from another system, e.g., the procurement system and/or the sourcingsystem. These forecasts can be updated at the sourcing or procurementsystem at any time to reflect improved information. Additional inputs tothe compliance subsystem may include spot market prices, for example inthe case that the contract price is determined by spot market prices.

The compliance subsystem must also receive information about the outcomeof the sourcing event, or otherwise about the contracts that are inplace with each supplier. The outcome of an expressive sourcing eventwill typically include (a) quantities of goods to be purchased from eachsupplier, and (b) all bid information from winning suppliers. It is thislatter bid information, including side constraints, volume discounts,and other forms of expressiveness, that defines the agreed upon rules bywhich payments are to be determined. As discussed above, users of thecompliance subsystem will generally be able to upload or transfereconomic terms relevant to compliant procurement into the CER system invarious forms, and also edit contracts within the CER system.

The CER system can also receive from the sourcing system as inputadjustments, side constraints and other information provided by thebid-taker in defining the final scenario that generated the outcome of asourcing event. This is useful information for making optimalreconciliation decisions in the event that there is a choice to makeabout which offers to accept, and this choice depends in part on futureprojected procurement quantities and thus also about the intent inregards to, for example, how to split the allocation across contracts.

The compliance subsystem can also receive information to guide theexpressive payment reconciliation process itself. For example, thefrequency with which reconciliation should take place and whetherdecisions to allocate to a particular offer of a supplier should be firmcommitments or whether they can be reconsidered later in the procurementprocess.

All of the above information can be adjusted or replaced at any time byusers of the CER system, for example by members of sourcing andprocurement teams.

Expressive payment reconciliation needs to handle two kinds ofexpressiveness:

-   -   single-PO expressiveness (e.g., for a trip from A to B and then        back from B to A in the context of transportation).    -   across-PO expressiveness (e.g., tiered discounts), which must be        reconciled over time via periodic optimization.

Regardless of whether it is single-PO or across-PO, the expressivepayment reconciliation always consist of two phases:

-   -   An expressive payment calculation phase, during which the proper        payments that would have occurred following the contract clauses        errorlessly.    -   A comparison and action phase, during which the outcome of the        expressive payment calculation is compared against the actual        payments made between the contracted parties, and, when a        reconciliation action is taken if the two differ. Such an action        may consist of initiating a reconciliation payment, or issuing a        dispute with a supplier.

In the process of performing optimal reconciliation, the compliancesubsystem will also periodically need to update contract informationwithin the procurement system—for example to reflect new price offersthat have triggered, and so forth.

We next discuss the two kinds of expressive payment reconciliationproblems.

Single PO Compliance:

A pre-cursor to across-order reconciliation is to ensure compliance withpayment terms within a single PO.

The basic transaction unit is a PO with an associated ID number and timestamp. Each PO j has an associated supplier ID and contract ID (orcontract IDs) and an associated list of triples (k, Q_(k), P_(k)) todenote the ID number k of the good, the quantity Q_(k) of the goodpurchased, and the total payment p_(k) for that quantity. In the case ofa kit (i.e. a pre-packaged set of goods) then this has a unique ID andplays the role of a good. The total payment p_(k) may be decomposed intoa per-unit base price and then additional accessorial charges (e.g.,tax, freight and so forth). The total payments p_(k) per quantity Q_(k)of good k may also then adjusted by a within-order discount, for examplethe terms of the contract might include a within-order dollar volumediscount that triggers when the total spend is above some amount(within-order multi-item tiered pricing).

This can require checking issues such as:

-   -   The accessorial charges are correct.    -   Any within-order discounts have been correctly provided.    -   Market prices or catalog prices that provide the price basis are        correctly assessed.

For the most part this step does not require the use of optimization butrequires checking for conditions of various rules within a contract. Forexample, perhaps the contract includes a discount of 5% when more thecost of a PO is $10,000 or more. In this case, then the compliancesubsystem should check whether the conditions that trigger the discountare valid.

Another example is when there is a package that corresponds to some setof items purchased as individual items: the compliance subsystem shouldcheck that the package discount was received by the buyer, if this isallowed as part of the contract. The contract could, alternately,require that the items be purchased as a package for the discount to beavailable. In the former case, optimization is required to determine thebest within-PO price because there could be multiple package-discountsavailable (or “kits”), and there is a minimal cost set-covering problemto solve to find the optimal kits that cover the items purchased in thePO.

It should be noted that users of current procurement systems often usethe following workaround to deal with the system's inability to handlepackages properly: they create new SKUs (stock keeping unit, theidentifier of a line-item), where one unit of this new SKU correspond toa package containing precisely defined quantities of the items that formthe package. The treatment of packages suggested in the previousparagraph is superior for two reasons:

-   -   Instead of just very specific quantities, ranges can be used.        E.g. “the package prices applies if quantity of A is between 90%        and 110% of quantity of B”, or “the package prices applies is        quantity of A is between 100 and 150 and the quantity of B is        between 120 and 170”. Capturing this semantics by the mean of        new SKUs would require a large number of SKUs, if quantities are        whole numbers. If quantities can be any floating point number,        then an infinite number of SKUs would be required.    -   The “new SKU” approach requires the buyer who places the order        to proactively recognize there is a package an use the correct        SKU. That is, he should send to the supplier a PO that has a        line for the package SKU rather than several lines for the        various items that constitute the package. Otherwise, the        package price would not be used automatically. Even if a user        recognizes after the fact that a package could have applied, the        vendor may not be willing to charge the package price. With the        CER system, buyers need not be proactive.

But to see that, optimization could be required even for this single POcompliance check, perhaps there are a number of different discountsavailable from a supplier, only one of which can be used, e.g., either$200 off, or 5% off, or 10% off items in group A when at least 100 itemsin group B are purchased, and so forth. In this case, the compliancesubsystem should check each discount and determine which has the bestvalue and make sure that the lowest payment was made to the supplier.More complex still, perhaps multiple offers can be used at once but theyare interconnected—such as, “if you spend $1000 in total then you areeligible for a 5% discount” but then other dependent offers such as“spending at least $300 on items in group A provides a discount of 10%on items in group B” where taking the first discount precludes thesecond discount because the total spend is then below $300 on items ingroup A.

Optimal Across-Order Reconciliation:

For the purpose of optimal reconciliation, assume now that the paymentswithin each PO are correct and have been reconciled if incorrect. Theseadjusted payments provide the input to the compliance subsystem.

What remains is reconciliation in regard to discounts and otheradjustments that apply on the basis of aggregate purchases acrossmultiple POs. During sourcing the buyer will identify the differentgoods that it intends to purchase during the term of a contract, andassociate an anticipated quantity with each kind of good. These goodsmay then play a role, often within aggregated groups (e.g., whentriggering multi-item conditional unit volume discounts), in determiningthe expected cost at the outcome of a sourcing event.

For each PO there is an associated list of triples (k, Q_(k),p_(k))—where p_(k) is adjusted to account for any percentage discountassociated with the PO—and a PO can have also an associated lump-sumdiscount. A PO also has a unique ID, a supplier ID, a list of associatedcontract IDs and a time stamp, as above. This information combines toprovide the total state of each contract for the purpose of optimalacross-order reconciliation.

Note that maverick buying, i.e. off-contract buying, is not relevant inoptimal reconciliation which considers only the correctness of paymentsgiven the procurement decisions that have been made.

The basic step of optimal expressive payment reconciliation considersthe current state of each contract, as reflected by the sequence of POsthat have been executed against each contract. In addition, the aboveinformation such as forecast quantities and other bid-taker informationmay be considered as part of the reconciliation process.

The appropriate granularity of state information depends on the contentof contracts. In its simplest form, all that is required is the totalquantity purchased of each kind of good from a supplier during the termof the contract and then the total payment made. The payment should beadjusted to reflect the contracted terms—for example, the contract mayspecify the base price and adjustments to the base price and independentof accessorials which apply to each PO (and are already verified.)

Given the total quantity purchased of each good, and the details of thecontract with a supplier, then an optimization problem can be formulatedto determine the minimal total payment consistent with the goodspurchased. The generic form of this optimization problem is:

minimize total payment

subject to

(i) quantities allocated to contract=actual quantities purchased

(ii) logic of offers and discounts respected

Given that optimization was used for winner determination duringsourcing, this is essentially the same optimization problem except thatthe quantity is adjusted from the total projected quantity to reflectinstead the current quantity purchased, and the information about buyer(or bid-taker) constraints and adjustments is neglected because thataffects decision making about the outcome of sourcing—and is relevantalso to optimal execution—but is not relevant in optimizing paymentsgiven procurement decisions already made. The other major difference isthat this is a single supplier optimization problem because we areoptimizing payments against a single supplier, rather than decidingwhich of a set of prospective suppliers to pick.

The optimization problem can handle complex discounts where the triggeris on one set of goods and the discount applies to another, and otherforms of complex expressiveness such as mutually-exclusive offers whereone but not all can be accepted.

In the event that the total payment is different from the total paymentmade to the supplier, then one approach is to apply a threshold (e.g.,5%) and whenever the total payment is more than 5% outside of itscorrect amount trigger a reconciliation payment from buyer to supplieror vice versa, together with an explanation (from the outcome of theoptimization) as to which offers should have triggered.

Some contracts may include sequencing constraints on offers. Forexample, an offer might state “once you have purchased 1000 units ofitem A, then you will receive a 5% discount on future purchases of itemB.” In this case, additional information is required to reflect thestate of the contract over-and-above simply the total quantity ofpurchases. Specifically, the sequencing across POs is also an importantpart of the input because this is necessary to determine the correcttotal payment. But again, in the case that the contract was evaluatedwithin the sourcing system then the same optimization problem can beused for reconciliation except that the quantities purchased are ascurrently committed and not based on projections.

This reconciliation process is myopic in that it considers the currentstate and acts as though the current procurement state is the finalprocurement state. The offers within contracts are considered andoptimized against, payments optimized, and a reconciliation is made.

Myopic reconciliation is a good strategy when the reconciliation processdoes not require commitment; i.e., if earlier POs can be reassigned toalternate offers at any time then there is no need to consider thefuture and it is a reasonable strategy to simply reconcile greedily andtake the optimal offers given this “null” assumption about the future.

Forward-Looking Across-Order Reconciliation:

On the other hand, the expressive payment reconciliation process mightitself have semantics that are agreed upon by buyer and supplier. Forexample, it should happen monthly and once elements of contracts areactivated (e.g, offer 1 vs. offer 2) then that decision cannot bechanged and offer 1 but not offer 2 will be active into the future. Inthis case, it is no longer optimal to be myopic and reconciliationshould instead be forward-looking and consider forecast procurementvolumes and also buyer (or bid-taker) constraints and adjustments.

For example, suppose there are two package offers in the originalcontract: offer 1 applies to purchases of equal quantities of (A,B) withsaving of $1 over line item prices, offer 2 applies to purchases ofequal quantities of (A,C) with saving of $10 over line item prices. Onlyone offer can be accepted and once committed the offer cannot bechanged. Note that these package of goods do not need to be purchasedsimultaneously within a single PO but can be purchased across time.Suppose that the firm purchases both A and B in month 1 and at the endof the month the compliance subsystem myopically accepts the firstoffer. But then the demand for A continues but the demand for B dropsand the demand for C picks up. With hindsight, or if reconciliation hadnot occurred in month 1, it would now be best to take offer 2 ratherthan offer 1.

The problem could be avoided with a reliable forecast at the end ofmonth 1 that quantities of C but not B will be purchased in the future.The problem could also be avoided if reconciliation was simply delayeduntil the end of the term of the contract, but this might not be allowedwithin the agreed upon terms of reconciliation (perhaps it must bemonthly) or undesirable for other reasons (the flow of discounts isdelayed.) The problem would also be avoided if reconciliation did notrequire commitment to an offer.

But in general it serves to illustrate the need for forward-looking,optimal reconciliation that is guided by volume forecasts.

It is also noteworthy that whereas for myopic reconciliation, it issufficient to consider each supplier in isolation and optimize the termsof its contract, for forward-looking reconciliation it may also benecessary to consider all contracted suppliers. This is because thecorrect offer to take with supplier 1 can depend on the offers in placewith another supplier, and the strategic intent of the buyer in terms ofhow to split the procurement allocation across suppliers.

The simplest form of forward-looking, optimal expressive paymentreconciliation is an optimization problem very similar to that solved instrategic sourcing. There are basic consistency requirements for theproblem to be well defined:

-   -   The state of each contract must be consistent with the long-term        forecast for quantity of each good to be purchased, e.g., it        should not be that 1000 units of good A are forecast but more        than this amount of good A have already been purchased in total        from the suppliers.    -   The state of each contract should be feasible given the        side-constraints detailed by the sourcing team; e.g., it cannot        be that the sourcing team specified that 50% of spend go to        supplier 1 and 50% to supplier 2 when more than 60% of projected        total spend has already been allocated to supplier 1.

The users of the compliance subsystem need to receive feedback whenthese basic consistency requirements fail and be able to adjust theinformation until it is consistent.

In contrast, note that it is expected that the state of a contract inregard to the total payment made might be impossible given the rules ofa contract. For example, the total payment might be incorrect given thediscounts that should have triggered. Of course this is expected, andexactly the problem that is addressed through periodic reconciliationagainst contracts that is performed to resolve any such discrepancy.

There is then a well-defined optimization problem, formulated as:

minimize total payment

subject to

(i) total quantity allocated to each contract>=total quantity purchased

(ii) total quantity allocated across all contracts=total projectedquantity

(iii) logic of offers and discounts respected

(iv) logic of buyer adjustments and constraints respected

The decision variables define an allocation of spend to each supplierand also determine which offers, discounts and adjustments are active inthe solution. This problem is defined over all contracts from allsuppliers.

The solution to the optimization problem will indicate a set ofdiscounts that will be accepted from each supplier, including adetermination for example of when the price charged for each unitchanges as a result of a quantity discount.

Based on this set of discounts, as a post-processing step the compliancesubsystem then:

-   -   (a) determines which offers from the optimal forward-looking        solution are already activated based on current spend; and    -   (b) determines the total payment that should have been made to        each supplier on the basis of these offers

For step (a), for example it might be determined that the buyer shouldleverage offer 1 but on the other hand this could be a volume discountthat will only trigger when some future quantity of spend is satisfied.For step (b), for example it might be that a trigger for a pricediscount has already been met and therefore the price should bediscounted appropriately.

In the case that the semantics of reconciliation require periodiccommitment to which offers are accepted, then an additional set ofconstraints that would be included in the optimization are: subject torespecting earlier decisions about which offers to activate.

Other constraints might also be included in such an optimization problemto better reflect future procurement decisions. For example, perhaps itis useful to include “smoothing constraints” to preclude a futureprocurement plan that is extremal in first making all purchases from onesupplier and then switching and making all purchases from a secondsupplier. This would be an unrealistic future strategy, for example, inthe case that both suppliers are contracted to mitigate risk againstsupplier failure.

Additional Considerations:

The step of optimal expressive payment reconciliation may occurperiodically (e.g., once per month), be triggered by a user of thecompliance subsystem, or be automatically triggered when based on someother determination (e.g., based on the quantity (dollar or volume) ofpurchases that have been committed since the last reconciliation step).In part, the decision about when to reconcile may be a tradeoff betweenreceiving rebates quickly on one hand but being able to take advantageof additional procurement information on the other hand.

When reconciliation is non-myopic, for example because of therequirement to commit to offers as they are accepted, then thereconciliation problem could also be formulated and solved as a problemof stochastic optimization, with uncertainty about volume projectionsexplicitly considered within decision making.

Other variations depend on the semantics of a contract. For example, acontract could provide a 20% discount on goods of type A if a certainvolume is met, and this could have the semantics that the 20% discountcan be taken even before the volume threshold is met but rather inanticipation based on the total contracted volume. In this case theoffers that are active based on projected quantities can be leveragedagainst current spend, even if the current spend is not itselfsufficient to trigger the offers.

Correct payment expressive payment reconciliation thus places a newemphasis on the “execution-semantics” of contracts: the semantics shouldmake this kind of distinction clear, i.e. is the discount availablebased on actual procurement quantity or based on projected quantity. Arelated example is described above for the case of within-ordercompliance, i.e. if a discount is available on a package of goods (A, Band C) then can it also be realized even if the goods are purchased asseparate items but within the same PO? This should be made clear in theexecution semantics of a contract; e.g., when generating contracts basedon the outcome of a sourcing event.

The compliance module can also provide some broad visibility about itspast action. For example, it may be that a particular seller is issuingincorrect invoices more often than other sellers. In this case,identifying this seller has value, so the problem can be investigated.It would be natural, for one embodiment of the compliance module of theCER system, to allow the user access information about, for example:

-   -   the average value of single-PO reconciliation payment for a        particular supplier;    -   the frequency of POs or invoices associated with a particular        supplier that require a reconciliation payment;    -   the frequency and average value of reconciliation payments        related to a particular good or service; and    -   the frequency and average value of reconciliation payments        related to a particular user that created the PO.

In forward-looking expressive payment reconciliation, the forecast forthe quantities to purchase of a contract may be generated from a lessdetailed forecast, containing information about the expected quantitiesof goods or services across several contracts, and a procurement plan.Then one can forecast the quantities to be purchased from a givencontract by computing the quantities that would be purchased out of thiscontract by executing the procurement plan to make the purchase of theless detailed forecast.

Enabling Optimal Execution and Procurement Strategy Benchmarking:

FIG. 3 illustrates the use of the CER system for optimal contractexecution and procurement strategy benchmarking. More specifically, thecontract execution module or subsystem of the CER system is utilized toaddress the problem that exists because of inexpressive procurementsystems and myopic procurement decisions.

It should be noted again that maybe variations are possible, and aredictated by the architectures of the other systems run by the buyer. Allthe variants discussed in section 6 related to the architecture enablingexpressive compliance applies here too.

The contract execution subsystem is able to dynamically interpose itselfinto the procurement process through either a feedback loop identifiedas “PO adjustment” in FIG. 3, or by providing a way to turn purchaserequest into purchase orders. A purchase request is a request topurchase some goods or services that is internal to the buying company.Often, it does not specify any supplier. Turning purchase requests intoa purchase orders mean identifying what suppliers to use for therequested items. On the other hand, in the case of PO adjustment, thecontract execution subsystem receives POs that are complete (inparticular, they have a named supplier), but that have not yet been sentto the supplier. In this case, the contract execution subsystem maycounter-propose an alternate supplier or an alternate offer from asupplier when this is projected to lead to savings in the long-run bytriggering volume discounts. Similarly, the contract execution subsystemmay counter-propose that a buyer selects items in packages rather thanindividually, in order to trigger a package discount.

By monitoring contract state and inter-posing in the procurementprocess, seeking to modify procurement decisions in order to (a) bettercomply with the outcome of strategic decision making during sourcing,and (b) achieve lower total procurement cost during the term of acontract the contract execution subsystem provides more expressiveprocurement. Rather than just handling line-item prices and single-POdiscounts, the effect is that the procurement system is also aware oflong-term, multiple-PO offers and discounts. Correct leveraging of suchlong-term offers requires forecasts, optimization and also constraintsand adjustments from the sourcing subsystem, in order to guide long-termstrategy.

An alternate architecture would combine the procurement system and thecontract execution subsystem system into a single, integrated,expressive procurement system. This invention is not limited to theparticular system architecture in FIG. 3. Rather, that is one possibleembodiment and many other colocations of logical modules or subsystemsare possible.

Upon identifying a potentially suboptimal procurement decision, thecontract execution subsystem can intervene in different ways. Onepossible intervention is a simple notification in order to provideinformation about the potential for long-term saving by a differentprocurement decision. This could be strengthened by, for example,keeping track of decisions made that go against the recommendation, andalso forcibly requiring an alternate decision by replacing the PO withan adjusted PO.

Single-Order Optimal Execution:

Most of the problems with contract execution occur because of the lackof visibility into long-term (across-order) forms of bid expressivenesssuch as volume discounts that trigger based on aggregate purchases. Butthere are also potential execution problems that can be determined on asingle-order basis. Adopting a single-order basis means that neither theforecast volumes nor strategic decisions as represented by the outcomeof a sourcing event come into consideration. Rather, the considerationis in regard to the goods purchased in the current PO and whether or nota better price can be obtained.

For example, the current PO could include items purchased individuallywhen they are available as a kit. In this case, an optimization problemcan be formulated:

minimize total payment

subject to

(i) total quantity of goods purchased≧quantity in PO

(ii) purchasing from the same supplier

(iii) logic of offers and discounts respected

where the utilization of kits and other simultaneous-purchase discountswill be automatically considered. The contract execution subsystem couldeither intervene directly and adjust the PO, or more likely suggest analternate PO for consideration by the buyer. The current state of thecontract is considered in this decision because it determines thecurrent prices available from the supplier (e.g., volume discounts mayhave already been reached based on aggregate, across-order purchases).

In a simple variation, the contract execution subsystem can alsofacilitate increased savings by performing price-optimization acrossmultiple contracts, with alternate suppliers considered, and allowingthe solution to be a split allocation across multiple suppliers.

Forward-Looking Optimal Execution:

In addressing the problem of myopic procurement against the currentstate of contracts, the main functionality is to provideforward-looking, optimal execution. By considering the forecast volumeand strategic decision(s) reflected in the outcome of sourcing, thesystem can avoid myopic, suboptimal procurement. For example, while itcould be optimal to purchase items from supplier 1 in the short-termthis might preclude the leveraging of a volume discount in thelong-term. Alternately, perhaps it is optimal to purchase items fromsupplier 1 in the short-term but this does not comply with a splitallocation decision requirement input into the sourcing system by asourcing team which intended to also leverage a contract with a moreexpensive supplier in order to mitigate risk in the supply chain.

In addition to defining the prices available under each contract forfuture purchases, the state of each contract is an important input tothe problem of optimal contract execution because one reason to usesupplier 1 over supplier 2 could be because additional purchases providea retrospective discount against purchases already completed. Forexample, one offer from a supplier could be “if you buy more than 1000units of A then every unit is discounted by 5.

Given a PO, the system determines the optimal suppliers and offers touse to purchase these goods given future projections and the sourcingstrategy as reflected in the outcome of the sourcing event, and alsoprovides the procurement team with a revised PO or set of POs (in thecase of multiple suppliers) together with projected savings on this POand projected long-term savings. It is possible that the projectedsaving on this PO is negative, either because the long-term savingsexceed the short-term increase in cost or because the short-termincrease in cost is justified in meeting the sourcing strategy such as arequired for a split allocation across multiple suppliers.

The same basic consistency considerations as outlined for the problem ofoptimal reconciliation are relevant here. For example, the state of eachcontract must be consistent with the long-term forecast of goods to bepurchased and also with the side-constraints and adjustments asspecified by the bid-taker at the outcome of the sourcing event(including requirements about split allocations). The user of thecontract execution subsystem can make adjustments in order to achievethese consistency properties when they fail to hold.

Given basic consistency, the problem of optimal execution can be solvedas a first optimization problem, formulated as:

minimize projected total payment over the term of the contracts

subject to:

(i) total quantity allocated to each contract≧total quantity purchased

(ii) total quantity allocated=total projected quantity

(iii) logic of supplier offers and discounts respected

(iv) logic of buyer adjustments and constraints respected

(v) smoothness constraints

The objective is defined over the entire history, including the cost ofpast purchases. This is important when retrospective discounts maybecome available in a way that is contingent on future purchases. Thetotal quantity purchased in constraint (i) does not include the currentPO. Rather, this quantity is reflected as part of the total projectedquantity (i.e., current committed purchases plus projected futurevolume.) This problem should optionally also include the constraint torespect earlier decisions about which offers to activate, in the casethe reconciliation against offers requires commitment.

The smoothness constraints can be introduced to preclude a futureprocurement plan that is extreme in first making all purchases from onesupplier and then switching and making all purchases from a secondsupplier. This would be an unrealistic future strategy, for example, inthe case that both suppliers are contracted to mitigate risk againstsupplier failure. One way to achieve this is to require a procurementtrajectory that tracks (perhaps within configurable guidelines) thefinal anticipated allocation split. That is, if the total quantitypurchased of item A should be optimally allocated 50% to supplier 1 and50% to supplier 2, then for some set of intermediate “way points” theallocation split should be within ±2% of this final split. The number ofway points can be configurable.

A second augmented optimization problem is then solved, in whichconstraint (i) is adjusted so that the total quantity purchased is aswould exist if the current PO was executed as currently proposed. Thisis one place in which basic consistency is required—it must be that theproblem is at least feasible if the current PO was committed, i.e., theresulting state of each contract must still meet hard constraintsprovided by suppliers and the bid-taker during the sourcing event.

Solving this second optimization problem provides the followinginformation:

-   -   Projected savings on this PO: The difference between the cost        for the PO as determined in the second optimization problem and        the cost as determined in the first optimization problem. In        computing this cost difference, any projected long-term savings        as they accrue to this PO should be factored (e.g., if a future        volume threshold will trigger a retrospective saving of 5%, then        this should be considered as part of the projected cost of the        current PO).    -   Projected long-term savings: The difference between the total        cost as determined in the second optimization problem and the        total cost as determined in the first optimization problem.    -   Revised PO (or POs): The solution to the first PO will define        which supplier(s) and which offer(s) should be utilized for the        quantities as reflected in the current PO.

A number of variations on this basic approach are possible. For example,the first optimization problem could be modified to make it costly, orimpossible, for the counter-proposed PO to be very different from thecurrent PO either by a cost penalty in the objective or through sideconstraints.

Procurement Strategy Benchmarking:

Going hand to hand with optimal execution is the benchmarking of thepast procurement decisions, called procurement strategy benchmarking.Indeed, procurement strategy benchmarking consist of computing, with thebenefit of hindsight, the best execution of the past actual purchases.The inputs needed by the CER systems are the same as for execution, within addition information about the flexible elements of the pastpurchases. The procurement strategy benchmarking then computes a new,fake, history of purchase transaction that differ from the actual oneonly by the flexible elements.

The amount of flexibility can vary. For example, one can restrict thechanges to be only about which supplier was chosen for particular POs.More flexibility is given if, in addition, it is allowed to order itemsthat were purchased within the same PO from different suppliers, or,reciprocally, to bundle items that were purchased the same day, but fromdifferent supplier, within the same PO. Even more flexibility is givenif the purchase of each item is allowed to be shifted slightly intime—maybe it is allowed to anticipate purchases by a day or two, or topostpone them by a day or two, or both.

Comparing the cost of the actual execution with these hindsightoptimized execution allows the procurement team to measure theirperformance. A large difference may be explained by a poor procurementplan or a poor execution against this plan.

Enabling Procurement Strategy Optimization:

FIG. 4 illustrates the use of the CER system for procurement strategyoptimization. More specifically, the procurement strategy optimizationsubsystem of the contract execution subsystem includes a feedback loopto the sourcing system, so that within procurement strategy optimization(and additional sourcing) can be performed within the sourcing system.The outcome of procurement strategy optimization by the procurementstrategy optimization subsystem provides an update to the procurementsystem through an adjustment to the current sourcing outcome determinedby the sourcing system.

It should be noted again that maybe variations are possible, and aredictated by the architectures of the other systems run by the buyer. Allthe variants discussed in section 6 related to the architecture enablingexpressive compliance applies here too.

Basic Procurement Strategy Optimization:

The basic functionality provided by the procurement strategyoptimization subsystem is to allow for periodic reoptimization of theoutcome of sourcing system. Whereas the current status quo in sourcingis to optimize an allocation and determine an outcome upon completion ofthe bidding process, the procurement strategy optimization subsystem ofthe CER system allows for revisions to this strategic decision.

Recall that the outcome of sourcing by the sourcing system defines (i)an allocation of goods to each supplier, (ii) a set of bid-takerconstraints and adjustments, and (iii) all bid information from winningsuppliers, including conditional discounts and other expressive offers.Expressive sourcing via the sourcing system is typically an interactiveprocess wherein the bid-taker explores a number of different scenarios(changing adjustments and side constraints) until settling on anoutcome.

The contract execution subsystem of the CER system allows forprocurement strategy optimization within the sourcing system. The basicidea is to provide the current state of each contract along withadjusted forecasts of future needs, and to allow the sourcing systemunder the control of a sourcing team to determine a new outcomeconsistent with the bids from winning suppliers. This can be donewithout collecting additional bids, with the decision reflecting areconsideration of how to allocate future procurement across theexisting set of winning suppliers.

The optimization problem used to guide procurement strategy optimizationwill be a variant on the standard problem solved by the sourcing systembecause: (i) it will contain committed quantities to suppliers based onthe current state of each contract, and (ii) it will reflect adjustmentsto payments already made to suppliers on the basis of the allocationdecisions, e.g., if discounts that trigger apply retrospectively toalready completed procurement.

The basic problem will be formulated as:

minimize projected total payment over the term of the contracts

subject to:

(i) total quantity allocated to each contract≧total quantity purchased

(ii) total quantity allocated=total projected quantity

(iii) logic of supplier offers and discounts respected, where anyadjustments to payments already made to suppliers are captured byincluding existing procurement against contracts within the decisionproblem (together with constraint (i) to ensure consistency of thisdecision with that already committed).

There are possible variations of the previous optimization problem. Forexample, the objective function may be altered to take into account morethan simply the payments to the suppliers. For example, adjustments maybe made (i.e., the payments are modified to favor or penalize somesuppliers). Also, the value of the goods may differ depending on whatsupplier or contract they are purchased from, for example becausedifferent internal processing are needed. One variation is that theobjective function is the net value to the buyer of the plan, that is,the value of the received items minus the cost needed to purchase andprocess them.

The sourcing system, under the control of the sourcing team, can thenadjust both the total projected quantity and the logic of buyeradjustments and constraints (including logic to reflect loss of goodwill or penalties for not meeting terms of current contracts) beforedetermining a revised outcome.

One decision that could be taken is to close out a relationship with asupplier altogether and thus save on the ongoing cost of maintainingsuch a relationship. Upon conclusion of procurement strategyoptimization, the outcome would be re-imported into the procurementsystem and one or more subsystems of the CER system as deemed suitableand/or desirable.

The sourcing system can also be provided with additional forms ofexpressiveness in guiding reoptimization, for example allowing thesourcing team to input into the sourcing system express preferences fornot violating existing contracts (but instead respecting volumecommitments) through side constraints or other adjustments. Penaltiesfor violating existing contracts may be real and set by the supplier,rather than to simply reflect the loss of good will. For example, thesepenalties could be a flat fee, a percentage of what was already spent,or a percentage of the cost of still committed quantities that will notbe purchased. Alternatively, a contract could have a clause that allowsfor no penalty if 60 days notice is provided, and this can be factoredwithin the optimization by providing for a continued allocation to thissupplier to represent an additional 60 days of ongoing procurement.

An additional opportunity provided by procurement strategy optimizationis to consider changes to spot market prices. That is, the spot marketalways provides an alternative to negotiated contracts and should befactored in when deciding which contracts to go with in the first place,when to void an existing contract and incur a penalty, and when tore-contract. A simple approach is to model the prices in the spot marketat any point in time as static and with infinite supply liquidity. Giventhis, then the spot market can be factored into the procurement strategyoptimization process by modeling the spot market as an alternatesupplier. A more sophisticated variation is to also seek to model thestochastic nature of prices in the spot market, and consider the optionvalue of a contract when deciding whether to enter into a new contract.

Continual Sourcing:

A simple modification can also allow for continual sourcing, wherein thesourcing function elicits new bids from suppliers or considers a new,unsolicited offer that has been received from a supplier.

Whereas the above optimization problem considered only the winningsuppliers from the previous event, or other pre-existing contracts, theproblem formulation can be modified to allow for an allocation to a newsupplier or to reflect a new offer received from an existing supplier.

In the event that a new supplier is accepted, or a new offer from anexisting supplier is accepted, then information about the nextcontract—once finalized—should be imported into the procurement systemand contract compliance subsystem of the CER system.

Support for Contract Negotiation and Re-negotiation:

As a side benefit, the same optimization methodology can also providesupport for negotiation by providing the sourcing system with abreak-even price for an offer for a new supplier. This can alternatelyallow for contract renegotiation with an existing supplier.

While retaining information about the state of each contract, existingoffers, and any penalties in regard to breaking existing contracts, anaugmented optimization problem can be formulated to include as a sideconstraint that a new supplier becomes part of the allocation. Forexample, the side constraint might require that 10% of the future volumeof goods of type A be allocated to this new supplier. The differencebetween the total cost of this augmented problem and the cost of theoriginal problem then reflects the current cost difference of going withthe new supplier.

The current cost difference can then be post-processed to enable a quoteby the supplier. For example, if the current cost difference is $10,000,then this can be divided in a dollar-weighted amount to the individualgoods that compose the proposed allocation to the new supplier. Forexample, if the total proposed dollar spend to the new supplier is$100,000, then this reflects a requirement of a price improvement of 10%which could go proportionately to the entire proposed allocation.Alternately, the sourcing system can provide the sourcing team with theability to specify preferences such as “what if 80% of the short-fall isto be made up from a price reduction on goods of type A and 20% on goodsof type B” and this can, in turn, trigger a proposal for how to adjustthe prices across different goods.

For the purpose of negotiation, the sourcing team might then not simplyquote these kinds of break-even price adjustments back to a supplier butrather look for adjustments that provide a 5%, 10% or so forth priceimprovement and also for the purpose of strategic negotiation. Theimportant benefit is to provide visibility for strategic decision makingof this kind by a sourcing team.

Enablement: A Typical Network Architecture:

The CER system can be hosted and delivered “on-demand” as an ASP modelor installed on a client's platform. A typical architecture will requirea multi-tiered application that can scale on each tier andload-balancing with at least two servers on each tier. A database thatsupports clustering could be employed, or otherwise a master-slaveconfiguration adopted though the vendor or the operating system.

In one embodiment, the tiers would be:

-   -   Web Application Tier: This tier is a clustered solution that        load balances requests across all the servers. There will not be        many users of the system and their front-end analysis will not        have extremely high load. Using standard technologies this is        either a J2EE application or a .NET application. If a J2EE        application, it can be run on any J2EE compliant application        server such as JBoss, SAP NetWeaver or IBM WebSphere.    -   Authentication Tier: This tier is responsible for user        authentication and group-role permissions. If using Microsoft,        then Active Directory is appropriate, if Java, then Lightweight        Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) is preferred. There are a        variety of LDAP servers, including open source OpenLDAP, Sun        LDAP, Fedora Directory Server, or Netscape Directory Server.    -   Remote Application Tier: This tier will be doing most of the        analytic work and monitoring the procurement transaction        networks. Requests will be processed across all the nodes and        results published and notifications sent. This tier must be        fault tolerant. Using standard technologies, this tier should        use a queuing or messaging service such as Java Messaging        Service (JMS). It must also support web services and AJAX        requests.    -   Transaction Tier: This tier is responsible for processing all        the transactions including reading, cleaning, and so on, and        also EDI and cXML transactions.    -   Reporting Tier: This tier is responsible for generating user        reports.    -   Database Tier: This tier is responsible for storing all the data        used throughout the system.

It should be a clustered solution to protect against loss of data. Usingstandard technologies, this needs to be accessible by JDBC or ODBC andto support a clustered solution with triggers, stored procedures, views,and referential integrity. Examples include MySQL, PostgreSQL, alongwith support for Oracle and IBM DB2 through a JDBC or ODBC layer.

The CER system will need to integrate with or may incorporate otherancillary systems, such as:

-   -   Identity Management System: a system that contains identity        information for people to log in to the application. Most        companies have an authentication system where user credentials        are stored. Passwords must abide by corporate standards and this        is all managed within this system.    -   Contract Management System: a system that holds the master        contracts across the entire organization including the item        master and supplier master. This system is primarily used for        document management of the contract through legal in order to        get them signed and executed.    -   E-Sourcing System: a system that is used to source the goods and        services. At the end of a sourcing event, a contract is created        so that the purchasing group can purchase goods off of the        contract. There is a need to integrate to this system because        the Contract Management System may not be able to capture all of        the expressive offers and capacity limitations agreed to in the        sourcing negotiation.    -   Transaction Network: a system that forms the underlying network        across all the procurement systems. Integrating with the        transaction network eliminates the need to integrate with        multiple different procurement systems such as those provided by        SAP, Ariba, and so forth.

The invention has been described with reference to preferredembodiments. Obvious modifications and alterations will occur to othersupon reading and understanding the preceding detailed description. It isintended that the invention be construed as including all suchmodifications and alterations insofar as they come within the scope ofthe appended claims or the equivalents thereof.

1. A computer-implemented method of procurement strategy optimizationfor a buyer against expressive contracts on goods or servicescomprising: (a) storing in a computer storage accessible to a processorof a computer data about a plurality of contracts, wherein the dataabout each contract specifies at least the following: one good orservice associated with the contract, a payment rule to determine apayment for the purchase of at least one quantity of at least one goodor service under the contract, and a seller under the contract; andwherein the data about a first one of the contracts also specifies atrigger condition and an associated effect, wherein the effect causes atleast one of the following: a payment to occur, a future payment tochange, a future payment to change contingent on a purchase transaction,or a constraint on allowable purchases to change; (b) storing in thecomputer storage a forecast of a future quantity of at least one good orservice to be purchased; (c) the processor of the computer determining afirst plan for future procurement against at least one of the pluralityof contracts in step (a) based on the good or service and the paymentrule in step (a), the trigger condition and the associated effect instep (a), and the forecast in step (b); and (d) responsive to theprocessor automatically approving the first plan subject to one or morepredetermined rules or the processor receiving an approval of the firstplan, the processor causing the first plan to be adopted for futureprocurement.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein the trigger conditionincludes at least one of the following conditions: the time of apurchase transaction occurs subsequently to a given point in time; thevolume quantity of at least one good or service, summed over a set of atleast one purchase transaction associated with the first contract,exceeds a quantity threshold; the monetary value of at least one good orservice, summed over the payments of each purchase transaction of a setof at least one purchase transaction associated with the first contract,exceeds a value threshold, where the payment in a purchase transactionis specified in a purchase transaction or determined by the payment ruleassociated with the first contract; the volume quantity of a first setof at least one good or service, summed over a first set of at least onepurchase transaction associated with the first contract, when calculatedas a fraction of the volume quantity of a second set of at least onegood or service, summed over a second set of at least one purchasetransaction, exceeds a fractional-quantity threshold; and the monetaryvalue of a first set of at least one good or service, summed over afirst set of at least one purchase transaction associated with the firstcontract, when calculated as a fraction of the monetary value of asecond set of at least one good or service, summed over a second set ofat least one purchase transaction, exceeds a fractional-value threshold.3. The method of claim 1, wherein the data about the first contractfurther includes information about a history of purchases made inconnection with the first contract, where the satisfaction of thetrigger condition is based on said information.
 4. The method of claim1, wherein the processor determines the first plan subject to at leastone of the following objectives: minimizing the estimated total paymentmade by the buyer for the forecast of future purchase of goods orservices to be purchased under the first plan; and maximizing theestimated total value to the buyer, net of estimated total payment, forthe forecast of future purchase of goods or service in to be purchasedunder the first plan.
 5. The method of claim 1, wherein the first planadopted for future procurement in step (d) includes at least one of thefollowing: a target quantity for at least one good or service to bepurchased in connection with a contract during a time interval; a targetquantity fraction for at least one good or service to be purchased inconnection with a contract during a time interval relative to allpurchases of the same or substitutable good or service; a targetmonetary amount for at least one good or service to be purchased inconnection with a contract during a time interval; a target monetaryamount fraction for at least one good or service to be purchased inconnection with a contract during a time interval relative to allpurchases of the same or substitutable good or service; a specificationof at least one purchase order wherein, when the purchase order occurs,then procurement against a particular contract is mandatory; aspecification of at least one purchase order wherein, when the purchaseorder occurs, then procurement against a particular contract isrecommended; a specification of a plurality of purchase orders and analternation, wherein, when the plurality of purchase orders occurs, thenprocurement of each purchase order against an alternation between aplurality of contracts is mandatory; and a specification of a pluralityof purchase orders and an alternation, wherein, when the plurality ofpurchase orders occurs, then procurement of each purchase order againstan alternation between a plurality of contracts is recommended.
 6. Themethod of claim 1, wherein the effect includes at least one of thefollowing: a payment due by the buyer to the seller associated with thefirst contract or from the seller associated with the first contract tothe buyer; a payment between the buyer and the seller associated withthe first contract, where the amount and due date of this payment arebased on the history of purchases made in connection with the firstcontract; a payment between the buyer and the seller associated with thefirst contract, where the amount and due date of this payment are basedon the history of purchases made in connection with the first contractand on external data whose origin is specified within the firstcontract; a change of a payment for future purchases on at least onegood or service; a change of a payment for future purchases on at leastone good or service based on a payment amount for the good or servicewhen the trigger condition is satisfied and on a history of purchasesmade in connection with the first contract; a change of a payment forfuture purchases on at least one good or service based on a paymentamount for the good or service when the trigger condition is satisfied,on a history of purchases made in connection with the first contract,and on external data that is specified within the first contract; achange of a payment to be made for a purchase transaction that isassociated with the trigger condition; and a change of a capacityconstraint that limits the quantity volume that a buyer can purchase onat least one good or service for future purchases.
 7. The method ofclaim 6, wherein the external data whose origin is specified within thefirst contract is either a price index, a tariff, or a financial index.8. The method of claim 1, further including: the processor receiving asecond plan for future procurement against at least one of the pluralityof contracts in step (a); and the processor determining the first planfor future procurement based one at least one of the following: aquantity difference of at least one good or service between the firstplan and the second plan; and a quality difference between the firstplan and the second plan, where the quality of each plan for futureprocurement is determined by at least one of the following: an estimatedtotal payment to be made by the buyer for the forecast of futurepurchase of goods or services to be purchased under the plan; and theestimated total value to the buyer, net of estimated total payment, forthe forecast of future purchase of goods or service in claim 1 to bepurchased under the plan.
 9. The method of claim 1, further including:storing in the computer storage a second plan for future procurementagainst at least one of the plurality of contracts in step (a), whereinthe one or more predetermined rules in step (d) includes at least one ofthe following: a quantity difference of at least one good or servicebetween the first plan and the second plan; and a quality differencebetween the first plan and a second plan, where the quality of each planfor future procurement is determined by at least one of the following:an estimated total payment to be made by the buyer for the forecast offuture purchase of goods or services to be purchased under the plan; andthe estimated total value to the buyer, net of estimated total payment,for the forecast of future purchase of goods or service to be purchasedunder the plan.
 10. The method of claim 1, further including: storing atleast one business rule in computer storage; and the processordetermines the first plan based on the business rule.
 11. The method ofclaim 1, wherein at least one of the plurality of contracts is stored inthe computer storage in response to a sourcing event in which aplurality of sellers compete through a computer network bidding processto enter into at least one contract with the buyer for futureprocurement of at least one good or service.
 12. The method of claim 11,wherein the storage of the at least one contract in the computer storagein response to the sourcing event is based on a business rule which isstored in the computer storage and which is utilized by the processorwithin the sourcing event.
 13. The method of claim 10, wherein thestorage of the at least one business rule in the computer storage is inresponsive a sourcing event that utilizes the same or a differentbusiness rule, wherein the sourcing event includes a plurality ofsellers competing through an electronic bidding process that is underthe control of the processor to enter into at least one contract withthe buyer for future procurement of at least one good or service. 14.The method of claim 1, further including the processor determining thefirst plan in step (c) subject to a current value or a forecast on thefuture value for at least one of the following: a spot price for atleast one good or service; and external data whose origin is specifiedwithin the first contract.
 15. The method of claim 14, wherein theexternal data whose origin is specified within the first contract iseither a price index, a tariff, or a financial index.
 16. The method ofclaim 1, wherein step (c) includes: the processor outputting a candidateplan; the processor receiving a first business rule in response tooutputting the candidate plan; and the processor determining the firstplan subject to the first business rule.
 17. The method of claim 1,further including the processor determining the first plan in step (c)subject to at least one of the following: a bid from a seller specifyingat least one contract that the seller would be willing to enter intowith the buyer; and at least one offer from a seller to modify at leastone of the following: one of the trigger conditions, one of the effects,or a payment rule in a current contract.
 18. A computer-implementedmethod of procurement strategy optimization for a buyer againstexpressive contracts on goods or services comprising: (a) storing in acomputer storage accessible to a processor of a computer data about aplurality of contracts, wherein the data about each contract specifiesat least the following: one good or service associated with thecontract, a payment rule to determine a payment for the purchase of atleast one quantity of at least one good or service under the contract,and a seller wider the contract; and wherein the data about a first oneof the contracts also specifies a trigger condition and an associatedeffect, wherein the effect causes at least one of the following: apayment to occur, a future payment to change, a future payment to changecontingent on a purchase transaction, or a constraint on allowablepurchases to change; (b) storing in the computer storage a forecast of afuture quantity of at least one good or service to be purchased; (c) theprocessor of the computer determining a first plan for futureprocurement against at least one of the plurality of contracts in step(a) based on the good or service and the payment rule in step (a), thetrigger condition and the associated effect in step (a), and theforecast in step (b); and (d) responsive to the first plan determinedfor future procurement determined in step (c), the processor: amendingat least one contract stored in the computer storage in step (a),replacing at least one contract stored in the computer storage in step(a) with an amended form thereof, or storing one or more new contractsin the computer storage.
 19. The method of claim 18, wherein: step (c)includes the processor outputting information that depends on the firstplan; and step (d) includes the processor receiving one of the followingin response to outputting the information that depends on the firstplan: the amendment to the contract stored in the computer storage instep (a); the amended form of the at least one contract stored in thecomputer storage in step (a); or the one or more new contracts.
 20. Themethod of claim 19, wherein, the decision in step (d) to amend at leastone contract stored in the computer storage is based on at least one ofthe following: a spot price on at least one good or service; a forecastof a future spot price on at least one good or service; an estimate ofbids received in a sourcing event; and an estimate of the payment rules,and trigger and effect conditions, in new contracts.
 21. The method ofclaim 19, further including: (e) storing in the computer storage asecond plan for future procurement against at least one of the pluralityof contracts stored in the computer storage, wherein the second plan iseither determined by the processor or received by the processor from anexternal source and is based on the forecast in step (b); and (f)responsive to the processor automatically approving the second plansubject to one or more predetermined rules or the processor receiving anapproval of the second plan, the processor causing the second plan to beadopted for future procurement.
 22. The method of claim 19, where theone or more new contracts in step (d) are stored in the computer storageby the processor in response to a sourcing event that includes aplurality of sellers competing through a networked bidding process toenter into at least one contract with the buyer for future procurementof at least one good or service.
 23. The method of claim 21, wherein thesecond plan in step (e) is further based on: a quantity difference of atleast one good or service between the first plan and the second plan;and a quality difference between the first plan and the second plan,where the quality of each plan for future procurement is determined byat least one of the following: an estimated total payment to be made bythe buyer for the forecast of future purchase of goods or services to bepurchased under the plan; and the estimated total value to the buyer,net of estimated total payment, for the forecast of future purchase ofgoods or service to be purchased under the plan.
 24. The method of claim21, the one or more predetermined rules is based on: a quantitydifference of at least one good or service between the first plan andthe second plan; and a quality difference between the first plan and thesecond plan, where the quality of each plan for future procurement isdetermined by at least one of the following: an estimated total paymentto be made by the buyer for the forecast of future purchase of goods orservices to be purchased under the plan; and the estimated total valueto the buyer, net of estimated total payment, for the forecast of futurepurchase of goods or service to be purchased under the plan.
 25. Themethod of claim 21, further including storing at least one business rulein the computer storage, wherein the processor causes the second plan tobe adopted for future procurement based on the business rule.
 26. Themethod of claim 21, further including: the processor outputting acandidate plan; the processor receiving a first business rule inresponse to outputting the candidate plan; and the processor causing thesecond plan to be adopted subject to the first business rule.
 27. Acomputer-implemented method of procurement strategy optimization for abuyer against expressive contracts on goods or services comprising: (a)storing in a computer storage accessible to a processor of a computerdata about a plurality of contracts, wherein the data about eachcontract specifies at least the following: one good or serviceassociated with the contract, a payment rule to determine a payment forthe purchase of at least one quantity of at least one good or serviceunder the contract, and a seller under the contract; and wherein thedata about a first one of the contracts also specifies a triggercondition and an associated effect, wherein the effect causes at leastone of the following: a payment to occur, a future payment to change, afuture payment to change contingent on a purchase transaction, or aconstraint on allowable purchases to change; (b) storing in the computerstorage data regarding a first plurality of purchase transactionscompleted in the past by following a first procurement plan against theplurality of contracts; (c) storing in the computer storage informationregarding elements of at least one purchase transaction of the firstplurality of purchase transactions; (d) the processor determining asecond plurality of purchase transactions subject to the following: achange to at least one but not all of the elements in step (c), a totalcost to the buyer, the good or service and payment rule in step (a), thetrigger condition and the associated effect in step (a), and theplurality of first purchase transactions in step (b); and (e) theprocessor storing in the computer storage a second procurement planprocurement plan against the plurality of contracts, wherein the secondprocurement plan is determined subject to the first procurement plan andthe second plurality of purchase transactions.
 28. The method of claim27, wherein the at least one element in step (d) is the name of theseller.
 29. The method of claim 27, wherein: the at least one element instep (d) is a purchase order; and the second plurality of purchasetransactions in step (d) is determined further subject to: the aggregatepurchase of goods or services being the same as in the first pluralityof purchase transactions, and at least one restriction on the allowabletime period between the purchase of a good or service in the firstplurality of purchase transactions and the purchase of the same good orservice in the second plurality of purchase transactions.
 30. The methodof claim 27, wherein: the at least one element in step (d) is the timethe purchase transaction was placed; and the second plurality ofpurchase transactions in step (d) is determined further subject to atleast one restriction on the allowable time period between a time atleast one purchase transaction was placed in the first plurality ofpurchase transactions and a time a corresponding purchase transaction isplaced in the second plurality of purchase transactions.
 31. The methodof claim 27, wherein: the at least one element in step (d) is a firstgood or service; and the second plurality of purchase transactions instep (d) is determined further subject to a substitution of a good orservice in a purchase transaction of the second plurality of purchasetransactions for the first good or service in a corresponding purchasetransaction of the first plurality of purchase transactions.
 32. Themethod of claim 27, further including storing in the computer storage atleast one business rule that imposes a constraint on the secondplurality of purchase transactions.